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DOCTOR OLDHAM 



AT GREYSTONES, 



HIS TALK THERE 




De omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis. 



NEW YORK : 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

846 & 348 BROADWAY. 

LONDON: 16 LITTLE BRITAIN. 

1860. 



A/*, h 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by 

D. APPLETON & CO., 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States 

for the Southern District of New York. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

The library table and Mrs. Oldham's opinion of it— Idea-images ; the cau- 
tion necessary in reducing them to feet and inches — Drawers made to 
prevent husband and wife pulling together ; yet serving to a more lov- 
ing harmony — Shattered ideals— How Mrs. Oldham was like Sir Isaac 
Newton's dog, and Doctor Oldham not like Sir Isaac — The wisdom of 



CHAPTER II. 

"Which grows out of the inartistic way this book began ; but gives the au- 
thor a chance to speak of the courteous reader of the last age ; and also 
to explain himself to the courteous reader of the present day, . .15 

CHAPTER III. 

"Which comes between the last chapter and the next one— The reader may 
omit if he will ; but he will lose something if he does, .... 20 



IV CONTENTS 



CHAPTEK IV. 

The library not made for the table— The recess that was not realized and 
the window that was— The library as finished— Doctor Oldham's opin- 
ion about good company— He quotes Doctor Southey and discourses 
about him, 27 

CHAPTEK V. 

Greystones : and what Downing might have said if he had had the altering 
of the plan of it, 83 

CHAPTER VI. 

Henry Eeed— Coleridge on Wordsworth s verses— The Doctor's theory of 
the distinction between man and the brutes, and also of the edible and 
potable universe, as propounded to Professor Clare, . . . .49 

CHAPTER VII. 

Short, if not sweet— Difference between the author and Rabelais, and some 
other celebrated writers, 62 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Doctor visits Mrs. Rossville's school— And tells his wife what he said 
to the little folks there — Mr. Grim— How God takes care the children 
shall not be hurt by bad catechisms, 66 

CHAPTER IX. 

More talk about children — The good Lord's contrivances to prevent their 
being shut out of the world of fiction, 76 

CHAPTER X. 

Glimpses biographical and auto-biographical— "With observations inter- 
spersed that are worth a chapter in themselves, 84 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XL 

How nature shows her gladness — June and Junefulness— "When a nose is a 
good thing— Is it an organ for the beautiful— The glories of October — 
Nature's picture gallery — Art and its limitations — Mrs. Oldham asks 
two very great questions, 93 

CHAPTER XII. 

Professor Clare — The Doctor's talk about the starry heavens— Addison and 
• Shakspeare— "Word-painting and other painting— Where the universe 
ends and how it is filled— Mrs. Oldham's two questions are not an- 
swered, .104 

CHAPTER XIII. 

More about the stars and the earth — Pantheism — Whether any thing can 
become so small as to become nothing and yet remain something— Time 
and space— Mrs. Oldham's two great questions again, and the way they 
were answered, 117 

CHAPTER XIV. 

The Doctor preaches to his daughter — Quotes Wordsworth and gets into 
heroics — Also he fulfils a scriptural duty — Remarkable street-sweepers 
and knife-grinders— Comforting doctrine concerning shirt-making and 
stocking mending, 133 

CHAPTER XV. 

Wherein the Doctor says pshaw to something advanced by the author, and 
advances his own notions— Comfort and swill not the highest felicity 
for rational beings — The world needs martyrs, but Crooke Racket not 
the right type, 150 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Lot's house in Sodom— Jonah in New York— The Doctor villifies univer- 
sal suffrage and an elective judiciary in a very shocking way ; and 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

makes the most unsupposable suppositions— An extraordinary ticket 
for city offices, 158 

CHAPTER XVII. 

A short chapter on judge-making— Not amusing; and not so likely to be 
interesting to those who need, as to those who do not need, the instruc- 
tion it contains, 176 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Something on universal suffrage and sacred rights— Wherein is seen how 
Professor Clare and Pelham Brief differ from each other, and the Doc- 
tor from them both, 183 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Hard and dry, perhaps— But going to the bottom of a subject immensely 
important to be understood in this country, 195 

CHAPTER XX. 

Very short, perhaps unpalatable— Yet, if true, ought not to give offence to 
any good man, 209 

CHAPTER XXI. 

Also short— Not without interest for some minds— But likely to displease 
two sorts of readers and to shock one of them, 213 

CHAPTER XXII. 

The Doctor at a woman's rights convention — What he did not say there, 
but would have said if he had said any thing, 220 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
On Dee-deeing, .247 



CONTENTS. Vll 

PAGE 

CIIAPTEK XXIV. 
Tweedledum and Tweedledee, 254 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Some of the Doctor's notions about conversation — His practice is another 
question, 258 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
Preliminary to another, 263 

CHAPTER XXVII. 
Of owls, 265 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

The Doctor says some things that sound very strange to Mrs. Garland — 
Bad Christians and good heathen— Mr. Grim — The necessity for a good 
God, 266 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

Professor Clare gets back to Japan, and the Doctor is unduly severe upon 
cant and the gospel of cotton fields, 278 

CHAPTER XXX. 

Mr. Stockjob Pile— Alderman Gubbins — Hardhead Bullion— Bob Slender 
—It takes something inside to make something— which is declared at 
the end of the chapter, 285 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

About Caspar Tuberose and his wife — "With other things touching the con- 
stitution of a gentleman, 297 

CHAPTER XXXII. 
The Doctor's horse— What and why about him, 318 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 
All-hang-together-ness, 321 

CHAPTEE XXXIT. 

LTEnroy, perhaps— Containing something natural— And also something su- 
pernatural from which nothing came except some natural remarks of 
the Doctor's. 835 



DOCTOR OLDHAM. 



CHAPTER I. 

the library table and mrs. oldham's opinion of it. idea- 
images ; the caution necessary in reducing them to feet 

and inches. drawers made to prevent husband and wife 

pulling together; yet serving to a more loving har- 
mony. — shattered ideals. how mrs. oldham was like sir 

isaac newton's dog and doctor oldham not like sir isaac. 
the wisdom of nonsense. 

The family were all gathered around the large 
library table, as usual of an evening. I said the 
large library table ; Mrs. Oldham ^thought it too 
large, and besides she disliked the shape of it. It 
was a square-cornered oblong table, and she would 
have preferred it to be oval. The Doctor, I know, 
secretly agreed with her ; at least he came to be of 
the same way of thinking after she had expressed 
her opinion — a thing he was very apt to do. But 



2 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

he had not frankly confessed his whole mind to her 
about it ; he had only told her that the oval shape 
might perhaps have looked better, without much 
diminishing the size of it, which he had all along 
insisted was no larger than it ought to be to give 
room for them all to sit around it — a point he had 
set his heart on from the beginning. 

The truth was, Mrs. Oldham, with her homely, 
honest way of speaking out her mind, had hurt the 
Doctor's feelings, without knowing it or intending 
it. But she had hurt them weeks before^ the very 
first time she saw the table. And this was the way 
of it. 

The Doctor had set his heart on having a Li- 
brary table, truly and properly such, a table for a 
library, one to hold books, one that would allow a 
good many books to lie on it, and large enough for 
all the family to sit around it, and read and write 
without interfering with each other, with room be- 
sides for any friend that might chance to drop in 
upon them. Such was his ideal of a library table. 
He had long indulged his mind's eye with the 
pleasing image. It had grown, in fact, to be a 
weakness of his, something that he in a sort doted 
on realizing some day. So he had gone and be- 
spoken it six months before the library was finished 



AT GREYSTONES. 3 

and ready to receive it, before indeed the founda- 
tions of the newly-built part of Greystones were laid. 
He had ordered it to be made six feet long and 
three feet wide, going only by the image in his 
mind's eye, and guessing even at the dimensions 
of that without having ever measured and noted 
any actual table of such a width and length. He 
had done so too without consulting Mrs. Oldham, 
which was something very unusual with him ; for 
he had a high opinion of her good sense. Indeed 
he was wont to say, that in point of practical wis- 
dom he thought his wife very much his superior ; 
but in the faculty of seeing through a speculative 
millstone without any hole in it, he did not scruple 
to say he did not consider her so highly gifted as 
Jeremy Bentham or himself. This matter of the 
library table was undoubtedly a practical affair, the 
getting it made at least, and yet, owing, he sup- 
posed, to the pre-occupation of his mind with his 
ideal, he had neglected to secure her advice and 
sanction, I mean as to its exact form and dimen- 
sions — for he had told her, in a general and passing 
way, that he was going to have a library table 
made — but as she made no particular inquiries, not 
imagining it was to be ordered so long beforehand, 
it happened that nothing more was said, 



4 DOCTOK OLDHAM 

So the table was made and brought home and 
set in its place. Mrs. Oldham looked at it for a 
moment or two, and then said : 

" Husband, I don't like it. It is too large, and 
the shape of it doesn't please me. Altogether, it 
looks like a table for a bank parlor or for an insur- 
ance office." 

Dear woman ! She little thought how inwardly 
aghast her words struck the Doctor. In the placid 
sincerity of her womanly and wifely heart, there 
was the most perfect, and at the same time per- 
fectly unreflected and unconscious confidence in the 
impossibility of her saying anything, or of his tak- 
ing anything she could say, in any other than a 
kindly spirit. So she had spoken as she felt, with- 
out thinking of it even as a matter in which there 
might be a difference of taste between them, still 
less dreaming that she was giving him pain. She 
knew nothing of his visions and his images. She 
did not know this table was his realized ideal. 
She knew nothing of all he had been dreaming 
about so long, and which of late, as the time of 
fulfilment drew near, had so filled his mind's eye. 
He had never told her ; although he is one of the 
most open-hearted persons I ever knew, and com- 
municative to a fault, as his wife often told him, 



AT GREYSTONES. 5 

and as lie himself has had too many occasions to be 
conscious of, when he has, in his frank, confiding 
way, laid himself open to the stupid, the brutal, or 
the malicious. Yet he had never told anybody, 
not even her. You may think this strange, but I 
do not. On the contrary, I think it altogether 
natural ; for always in your dreaming, speculative 
natures, like the Doctor's, there are some cherished 
fancies which, with all their frankness and unre- 
serve, they are shy of revealing to any human crea- 
ture — from a half consciousness of their weakness 
about them and their inability to bear any exposure 
of it to the unsympathetic, and yet an instinctive 
sense of the impossibility of anybody but them- 
selves fully sympathizing with them. You may 
think this an over deep and wise lesson in human 
nature to bring in here to explain such a trifling 
thing as the Doctor's not telling his wife his secret 
fancies about a table. But it is a true lesson, and 
one that everybody ought to learn ; one that will 
explain a great many other things besides the Doc- 
tor's silence ; and you ought to be thankful for a 
lesson of wisdom, however trivial the occasion that 
leads me to give it to you. 

But so it was, the Doctor had never told even 
his wife, — not, of course, from any deliberate pur- 



6 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

pose of concealment, but unconsciously, from the 
influence of the feeling I have mentioned ; and so 
she could not know what she was trampling upon. 
She would not have hurt his feelings for the world. 
But she had. She had demolished his ideal ; she 
had shattered his vision. He could not stand up 
against her opinion. He never could in such mat- 
ters. He had never been able all the time they 
had lived together to think right well of anything 
that did not suit her taste. 

But now the shock was great. He could not 
bring himself to show how much he was wounded. 
He tried to hold up. He even defended his vilified 
ideal. 

" Too large, my dear ? Why, it is only large 
enough for us all to sit about it of an evening in 
that comfortable pleasant way, which I am sure 
you think so nice. Besides, see here ! " turning her 
attention away from the size of the table, "here 
are six drawers, one for each of us, three on one 
side and three on the other. This one is for me ; 
that opposite is yours ; here is Phil's ; there 
Fred's ; this is Lilly's ; and this is for Cousin 
Kitty when she comes. It is so pleasant to have 
one's own drawer to put one's things into which 
one does not wish to leave lying on the table, and 
yet wants to have always near at hand." 



AT GREYSTONES. 7 

" I see/' said she, taking hold of her drawer 
and pulling it out, " but, husband, your six draw- 
ers are only three, each of them running through 
the whole width of the table and drawing out on 
either side. See, your drawer and mine are only 
one drawer with a partition across the middle and 
knobs on both ends ; so, when you open your 
drawer on your side of the table, you draw mine 
after it out of my reach. What shall we do if we 
both wish to use our drawers at the same time ? " 

" Do ? " said the Doctor, disconcerted at this 
new discovery to the discredit of his ideal, " do ? 
do ? Well, my dear," pinching his nose between 
the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, his usual 
resource in such cases, " I do not know that I can 
tell you what we must do. But I can tell you 
what we must not do. We must not do what you 
and I have always done hitherto/' 

" What do you mean ? " she inquired. 

"Pull together, my dear. We have always 
pulled together. But it will not do for us to pull 
our drawers together. We must pull them in the 
spirit of compromise, in the spirit of mutual com- 
promise, my dear Mrs. Oldham, and then this very 
peculiarity in the make of our drawers, — a pecu- 
liarity for which I confess I do not see any good 



8 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

mechanical reason — will become, I will not say a 
memento to the practice of a virtue which even 
prudence, in a case like this, would dictate to 
merely selfish natures, but will become — as all out- 
ward things, however trivial, do become to right 
loving hearts — a sermon and a sacrament of 
divines t charity." 

The Doctor paused, inwardly elated with the 
gentle excitement of his small sermon. The justice 
of his wife's objection was palpable, and there was 
not a single compensating advantage. But he did 
not like to own that the drawers were made in this 
absurd way by his own special direction, from a 
notion they would be handier — a notion he had got, 
not from ever actually seeing and handling any real 
drawers made in this fashion, but solely from con- 
templating the idea-image in his mind's eye. 

He was glad to get off from the subject. But 
the truth is that, from this time, 

. . . . The glory and the gleam, 
The consecration and the poet's dream, 

began to fade from his realized ideal.- He began 
to see his table through his wife's eyes. At length 
every time he looked at the long square-cornered 



AT GREYSTONES. \3 

thing, with its shining "bronze imitation leather top, 
he saw it was not the thing he ought to have or- 
dered. It was too large for the room, though he 
was still sure it was not too large for them all to 
sit at together ; still, as a matter of proportion and 
good looks, it was too large ; its shape was bad ; 
and it looked too much like a " bank table " — he 
could not but confess it to himself, although he 
had felt that to be the unkindest cut in his wife's 
speech. He could not but secretly think how much 
better a nicely proportioned oval table, with a rich 
cloth cover of suitable color, would look. 

But he had never brought himself to acknowl- 
edge it to her in a full, frank way, before this even- 
ing ; because it was only this evening that he had 
got fairly over the chagrin and soreness of having 
the glory so torn from the vision of his long 
dreams. But to night he felt no difficulty in mak- 
ing the admission. 

" Mrs. Oldham, my dear," said he, as they were 
drawing up to the table, " you were right. This is 
not the table we should have had. It is too large. 
It is not the right shape. It does look too much 
like a bank table." 

" Husband," said she, in her kind placid voice — 

there was no triumph, no gratified vanity in her tone 
1* 



10 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

or look, any more than in her honest heart — " hus- 
band, you had better have consulted me before get- 
ting it made." 

" I am sure of it, my dear/' answered the Doc- 
tor, " you are an oracle of practical wisdom, Mrs. 
Oldham ; I never neglect to obtain your advice and 
sanction in any matter, of affairs, without finding rea- 
son to regret it in the end. But my forethoughts, 
you know, are very much like the Irishman's : they 
come afterwards. I am as full of notions as a Yan- 
kee, and as eager and incautious in realizing them 
as an Irishman, or, as my friend Idleman calls me, 
a very c sanguinary man/ I have done many hasty 
things in my life that I repented of when they were 
past help. But there is one thing I have never re- 
pented of." 

" What is that, husband ? " 

" Offering myself to you, Mrs. Oldham. You 
have been my good angel, my dear." 

Mrs. Oldham's cheeks — still ruddy and round, 
though nearly a score of years had passed away 
since the event to which the Doctor referred — her 
matronly cheeks flushed slightly at this speech of 
her husband's ; the more perhaps that not only the 
children and cousin Kitty were present, but also 
Maggie Crampton, who had come up from town on 



AT GKEYSTONES. 11 

a visit, and was sitting at the moment between the 
Doctor and her. 

He went on, however :• 

" But, in regard to this table, you do not know 
what a shock you inflicted upon me. I have reason 
to say to you 5 as the great Sir Isaac Newton said to 
his dog Diamond, c Diamond, Diamond, thou 
•little knowest what harm thou hast done me ! ' " 

" Bless me, husband, what have I done ? " 

" Shattered my ideal." 

" Shattered your what ? " 

" My ideal, the vision of my mind. It is all in 
fragments. And the mischief you have done me, 
my dear, is not like that which Diamond did his 
master. That great philosopher could collect the 
scattered fragments and reproduce what Diamond 
had destroyed. But my ideal is irretrievable — it is 
shattered and lost forever." 

" My dear husband," said she, in a pitying tone, 
" I am so sorry for your shattered ideal. But we 
will have a new and more beautiful one by and by. 
But indeed I do believe," she added, seeing the 
smallest trace of a twinkle in the Doctor's eye, 
" you are not sorry at all that you got so ugly a 
table made, seeing it has given you a chance to talk 
so much nonsense." 



12 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

"Nonsense, my dear/' said he, "I hope you 
think it charming nonsense. I trust you have a 
proper esteem for nonsense. It has in it the soul 
of the deepest wisdom. Like the motley of the 
Middle Ages, it often covers up more wit and sense 
than the knight's helmet, the earl's cap of mainte- 
nance, or the abhot's mitre. I declare to you some 
of the most solemn wise things I ever read have 
not seldom seemed to me the most painfully foolish 
or the most ridiculously absurd things in the world, 
while on the other hand, many things that Mrs. 
Slender thought very foolish, Miss Prim quite im- 
proper, and Doctor Rigid highly irreverent, have 
been to me the most charming lessons of virtue and 
religion, the purest goodness and the holiest wor- 
ship, as full of pathos as of fun, making me laugh 
and making me cry, and making me better by both 
operations, filling my heart with more love to God 
and man than a dozen of Doctor Selah Solemn's 
Sermons on Sanctity, or Mrs. Softly's Serious 
Thoughts." 

" What would become of us, my dear," he con- 
tinued, " if all the books that Mrs. Slender thinks 
foolish, Miss Prim improper, and Doctor Rigid ir- 
reverent, were banished from the world ; — no more 
Mother Goose's Melodies, nor the tragical fate of 



AT GBETSTONES. 13 

Cock Robin, nor the immoral exploits of Puss in 
Boots, nor the mournful tale of Little Bopeep's 
Sheep's Tails, nor the story of the Three Bears 
with their three porridge pots and chairs and beds, 
and the mysterious old woman that got in at their 
door and out at their bedroom window, and has 
never been heard of since, — no more these and a 
thousand other nonsensical stories of foolish impos- 
sibilities for the little people to laugh over, and 
weep over, and wonder over ; and no more Rabelais 
with his Pantagruel and Panurge, Cervantes with 
his Knight and Squire, Shakespeare with his more 
talkers of wise nonsense than I can name here ; no 
more Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim ; no more Doc- 
tor Primrose and Moses, nor Elia, nor Doctor Dove, 
nor Diedrick Knickerbocker, nor Mr. Sparrowgrass, 
for the delight of old folks and young folks both ; — 
but all these, and hundreds of others, great like 
these in nonsense, done away with from the face of 
the earth, gone from human memory, and nothing 
left for the young people but Mrs. Sweet's Infant 
Hymns, and Professor Savethought's Great Things 
made Small, and nothing for the older folks but 
Dr. Solemn's Sermons and Mrs. Softly's Serious 
Thoughts ! Think of it, my dear Mrs. Oldham ! 
I really do not believe it would be good for the 
world/' 



14 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

The Doctor paused, quite affected by the pic- 
ture he had drawn. 

" But, husband/' said Mrs. Oldham, " it is not 
every one that can see the soul of wisdom and 
goodness in those books of nonsense as well as you 
can, and therefore we ought to be glad there are 
such writings as Doctor Solemn's Sermons and 
Mrs. Softly's Serious Thoughts." 

" True, my dear, true," replied the Doctor, 
" but let us also honor wise and holy nonsense." 



CHAPTER II. 

WHICH GROWS OUT OP THE INARTISTIC WAY THIS BOOK BEGAN; BUT 
GIVES THE AUTHOR A CHANCE TO SPEAK OF THE COURTEOUS 
READER OP THE LAST AGE ; AND ALSO TO EXPLAIN HIMSELF TO 
THE COURTEOUS READER OF THE PRESENT DAY. 

What a fine old personage was the " Courteous 
Header " for whom the writers of the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries wrote their books. How 
delightful the image or eidolon of him that rises 
before the mind's eye, as we notice in the writings 
of that time the thousand little tokens of thorough 
good understanding and mutual respect between 
the author and his reader. The picture is as 
distinct and agreeable as that of Sir Koger de 
Coverley ; and we feel a positive regard for him 
such as we cannot help feeling for the good old 
Knight — who was himself undoubtedly one of the 
most courteous of the courteous readers of his 
day. 

I trust the generation of them is not extinct, 



16 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

although I do not so often perceive them to be 
expressly addressed in the books of our day : but 
this, I would fain believe, is owing only to that 
same change in the fashion and manner of the 
times which makes the polite forms of social inter- 
course to be so much more brief and simple, and 
causes so much to be now tacitly taken for granted 
in the way of courteous and kindly feeling which 
it was the custom to give ample and ceremonious 
expression to in those days. 

So I am apt to think. Why not ? Does any- 
body imagine Sir Koger de Coverley to be dead ? 
I for one will never believe it. You will not indeed 
find him in the same fashion of dress, nor journey- 
ing along the road in the same way, nor with the 
same accidents of position and circumstance ; but 
putting out of view the different way in which 
modern tailors make up men, and the different 
modes of travelling — all the accidents of the case, 
I am bold to say that every body has met him 
more than once on the steamboats and in the rail- 
way cars ; some perhaps without knowing him, but 
some of us know him well — have been out in fact 
at his house, and found him the same personage, as 
fresh and delightful as ever, the same charming 
mixture of benevolence, old-fashioned politeness, 



ATGREYSTONES. 17 

simplicity ; charity, and love of country life and 
country pleasures. 

And if the good Knight is yet alive, why should 
we doubt that the courteous readers are yet alive ? 
So I am determined to believe, and that this im- 
mortal work will find such readers. There is some- 
thing so pleasant and mutually honorable to the 
author and his readers, something so creditable 
to human nature in the very terms. Courteous 
Header ! it expresseth the propriety of the rela- 
tionship between the parties. It expresseth espe- 
cially the quality of moral fitness on the part of a 
reader to be a reader. By what other title can he 
claim ? The author taketh pains, doth his best 
(it is surely seemly always so to presume), to inform 
or instruct, convince, persuade, entertain, or amuse 
■ — in short, in some form to confer benefit or 
pleasure or both upon his reader. A courteous 
reception is therefore his due. It is unfit in itself, 
and it is unbefitting in you to withhold it. As 
the boor that passeth on with his cap unlifted and 
untouched, in churlish disregard of the gentle lady 
that biddeth him good-morrow, so is the reader 
that cometh not to the perusal of a book in a can- 
did and kindly temper. 

A book therefore — always supposing it to be 
written, as every book should be, in an honest spirit 



18 DOCTOE OLDHAM 

and for a worthy end — a book and a courteous 
reader are cognate conceptions that should be as 
inseparable as gentleness and a lady, gallantry and 
a knight, honor and a gentleman. To put them 
asunder implies a contradiction. 

I have been led into saying all this because I 
am sensible that I have begun this book in a way 
that makes some demand upon the courtesy of the 
reader. I have not begun at the beginning — 
which is the order of nature ; nor at the end ; 
although that is a very possible way to write a 
book with good effect, and certainly it is an excel- 
lent way with some books that are printed to be 
read from beginning to end, to read them back- 
wards from end to beginning — a thing I shall not 
quarrel with any reader for doing with this book if 
ever it come to an end, but rather advise ; nor have 
I begun in the middle of things, which is recom- 
mended in some cases. 

Now if any one should come blustering up to 
me with an insolent air and a menacing tone, and 

demand to know why the mischief I opened 

my book with that chapter on the Library Table 
before saying any thing about the house, and where 
it was, and who and what Doctor Oldham was, — 
in short why I didn't begin at the beginning, I 
should know the man was not a courteous reader ; 



AT GRE YSTONES. 19 

and I should decline giving him my reasons upon 
such compulsion. But to those truly courteous 
readers, who, taking properly for granted that I 
have very good reasons, may be desirous at this 
stage to know what they are, I am cheerfully ready 
to explain myself. 

I did not then begin at the beginning, because 
when I began I did not know where the beginning 
was. 

I did not begin at the end, because I was 
equally ignorant when, where, and how it would 
end, and am so still. 

I did not begin in the middle, as Horace ad- 
vises, because that is the rule for an Epic story, 
and my book is neither an Epic nor a story. 

So much for the reasons why I did not begin 
otherwise than as I did. 

Now for the reason why I did begin as I did : 
I put that chapter on the Library Table first, be- 
cause I wrote it first, and for no other reason that 
I am aware of. 

" But may I ask, sir, why you wrote it first ? " 

You may, courteous reader, but that is a point 
on which I can give you no satisfaction ; for I am 
as ignorant as yourself. 



20 DOCTOR OLDHA 



CHAPTER III. 

WHICH COMES BETWEEN THE LAST CHAPTER AND THE NEXT ONE. — 
THE READER MAY OMIT IF HE WILL; BUT HE WILL LOSE SOME- 
THING IF HE DOES. 

So it is ; one thing engenders or draws after it 
another — be it debt, or blow, or word. I am afraid 
I shall displease all orderly straight-going people ; 
but it is the penalty of my first false step. Not 
beginning at the beginning, I involved myself in 
the necessity of writing that intermediate chapter 
in order to tell the courteous reader how I came to 
make the mistake, and to speak him fair. And 
that leads to another chapter ; for it leads to some 
other things that ought to be said. I might insert 
them in the middle of the last chapter, cutting it 
open as they do steamers when they lengthen them. 
But there's the trouble of it ; and, besides, such 
things are mostly weak-backed and apt to break. 
So what remains to be said had best be put into a 
chapter by itself, only let me first take occasion to 



ATGKEYSTONES. 21 

warn my young readers to remember what conse- 
quences are often entailed by a single false step. 
As with two straight lines starting from the same 
point with an angle of divergence infinitesimally 
small 

" But, sir, will you not be so kind as to pro- 
ceed at once to the explanation of the things pre- 
sumed in your first chapter, and then go on with 
the story ?" 

courteous reader — for such I will count you, 
although your tone is the least in the world per- 
emptory — you are also an impatient reader ; and 
in this very quality you may see the fitness of 
something further to be said in order that there 
may be a right understanding between us, and that 
we may then go on with mutual pleasure, as those 
who wish to go the same road and wish to go to- 
gether, or else part company as those who, meeting 
on the highway, yet bound to different points, hold 
common course for a brief space with courteous 
interchange of greeting and remark, until the next 
fork of the road obliging them to separate, they 
take leave of each other with mutual respect and 
good will. 

Let me then put you right as to the character 
of this immortal work, that you may no longer talk 



22 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

about "getting on with the story." Kemember, 
I have said it is not a story at all. It certainly is 
not, in any proper sense of the word. There is 
next to nothing of story in it ; and what little there 
is, is there for the sake of the book, and not the 
book for the sake of the story — a literary distinc- 
tion I trust you will not fail to note. The book is 
a record of talk at Grreystones — the talk of Doctor 
Oliver Oldham. His wife may say something ; his 
friends may chance to get in a word now and then, 
but the talk will be mostly the Doctor's, which 
you may take to be specially implied in the mystic 
monogram : 




It is to be the 0. 0. book ; not the double 
nothing book, nor the double odd book, but the 
Oliver Oldham book — a book full of the Doctor — 
a book of thought ; for the Doctor is always think- 
ing as well as talking ; and I shall have to set 
down his thoughts on all sorts of subjects — books 
and things, men, manners, life, art, morals, politics, 
and religion. 



AT GREYSTONES. 23 

" Story, God bless you, I have none to tell," 
as the c needy knife-grinder ' said. You will find 
it much more a book of sermons than a story. 
Yery queer sermons, too, I dare say you may think 
some of them ; many things in them which Doctor 
Shallow and Miss Prim will pronounce very non- 
sensical and foolish, or very irreverent and shock- 
ing ; and some things, I am afraid, which the Phari- 
sees, Sadducees, and Herodians, will all join in vehe- 
ment abuse of ; but nothing for all that which is 
not true and salutary to those who know how to 
receive it — as all truth always is. There will be 
things solemn, and things facetious, and things out 
of the common way : but I should not be at the 
pains to put them down, if I did not think they 
would be read with pleasure and profit by all the 
people of my parish — the good and the wise, both 
those that are grave and those that are gay, and 
especially those that are both by turns, or (which 
is best but rarest of all) those that are both at 
once ; and if I did not also hope they would help 
' the young to some right notions, free them from 
some conventional delusions, cants, and shams, and 
set up some landmarks of truth and righteousness 
in the great realm of thought. 

Do not, therefore, curious and impatient 



24 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

reader, talk of story ; neither be over eager for ex- 
planations concerning the library that contained 
the table, and the house that contained the library, 
and the Doctor, who and what he is that built the 
house that- contained the library, etc., etc. Ke- 
member the House, that Jack built, and remember, 
too, the sonnet that Coleridge made on it (after it 
fell to ruins), showing how small things may be 
made grand by big words and a sounding style — as 
may also be seen in the sermons of many of the 
popular preachers of the day. 

Here's the sonnet : 



And this reft house is that the which he built, 

Lamented Jack ! and here his malt he piled. 

Cautious in vain ! these rats that squeak so wild, 

Squeak not unconscious of their fathers' guilt. 

Did he not see her gleaming through the glade ! 

Belike 'twas she, the maiden all forlorn, 

What though she milk no cow with crumpled horn, 

Yet aye she haunts the dale where erst she strayed, 

And aye beside her stalks her amorous knight! 

Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn, 

And through those brogues, still tatter'd and betorn, 

His hindward charms gleam an unearthly white. 

Ah ! thus through broken clouds at night's high noon, 

Peeps in fair fragments forth the full orb'd harvest moon ! 



Thank me for this sonnet : or if not thankful 
for it for yourself, try to be thankful I have put it 



ATGIiEYSTONES. 25 

here for those who will be glad to see it, and you 
may be sure there are some such. 

You ought to thank me too for the moral lesson 
I was going to draw from those two straight lines 
which you cut off. You cut short a homily which 
in the compass of a page would have contained 
more matter for profit to my young and thoughtful 
readers, than the whole six volumes of Professor 
Stickinbark's Theological Lectures, or all the Kev- 
erend Calvin Grim's awful sermons. 

And believe me, impatient reader, that I 
never turn aside from what seems to you the 
straight road, nor ever pause or linger on my way, 
without good reason, — sometimes for my own 
pleasure or convenience, but mostly with a view to 
some special pleasure or advantage which others 
will find, if you do not. Kemember there are 
others besides thyself, and of more patient mood. 
Why should the universe be all made over again to 
suit thy humor ? "Why all the world be put going 
sixty miles an hour upon an air-line railway to 
accommodate thy restless nerves ? Why all old 
country roads destroyed, — no more lanes and by- 
ways, no zig-zags, no turnings and windings, no 
resting places, no summer-houses, nor rustic seats 

under spreading chestnut or gnarled oak beside the 
2 



26 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

gurgling brook ? Is this fair ? Is it reasonable ? 
Is it not rather the height of selfishness ? Curb, 
then, this chafing spirit ; think more of others and 
less of yourself. And if you find no pleasure in 
these intermediate chapters, try to be glad that 
there are those that will : so shall you yourself get 
a gain of inestimable value from this very trial of 
your patience. 

As to the rest, let me assure you that while the 
main interest of this work will be in what the 
Doctor says, you may look for all needful explana- 
tions sooner or later in the coming chapters con- 
cerning the Doctor himself, his personal life, and 
outward circumstances. 



AT GB ETST OKES. 2? 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE LIBRARY NOT MADE FOR THE TABLE. — THE RECESS THAT WAS 

NOT REALIZED AND THE WINDOW THAT WAS. THE LIBRARY AS 

FINISHED. DOCTOR OLDHAM'S OPINION ABOUT GOOD COMPANY. 

— HE QUOTES DOCTOR SOUTHEY AND DISCOURSES ABOUT HIM. 

The Library, as well as the table, was a long- 
cherished ideal of the Doctor's, on which he had 
set his heart even more than on the table. Indeed, 
he always asserted that, although the table was 
made first, yet it was made for the library, and not 
the library for it. 

In giving directions for the library, the Doctor 
had, as in the matter of the table, gone according 
to the long looked-at image in his mind's eye, and 
in the same way of guessing at the dimensions and 
other details ; yet some of the disasters almost in- 
evitably resulting from the difficulty of getting the 
exact measurement of spiritual images and hitting 
their proper visible effects, were prevented in this 
case by the good sense of Mrs. Oldham, who, being 



28 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

on the spot and daily consulted by the Doctor as 
the work went on, luckily prevented more than one 
of his images from getting irretrievably realized ; 
which, however well they might look in an ideal 
picture, would have been any thing but satisfactory 
in an actual room. 

It was, for instance, a part of his ideal to have 
a large recessed window at the east end, giving 
more expression to the room, and harmonizing bet- 
ter with the west end, which was a semi-octagon 
with three windows. And he thought. he had an 
ingenious contrivance for this ; but Mrs. Oldham, 
who did not get a clear notion of his plan until 
after the studs for the recess were set, pointed out 
to him that the effect of it would be to give them 
two closets which they did not need, at the expense 
of room which they did need. So he gave up his 
contrivance and had the studs taken down. 

But as for the window, it was too late to alter 
that. The Doctor's ideal had got realized, and it 
was certainly a mistake. It should have been a 
window with three compartments — a wide window 
in the middle, and a narrower one on each side, 
separated from the larger one by mullions. But it 
was made with only two compartments, being in 
fact nothing but two ordinary windows set as near 



AT GEEYSTONES. 29 

each, other as they could be put. The Doctor 
thought it looked very well in his ideal ; but when 
it got actually made, he became conscious of a 
secret dissatisfaction with it, which he would not 
allow himself to analyze or dwell upon, much less 
breathe a word of to his wife. He hoped indeed 
she would not see any thing to condemn ; but he 
had an inward dread she might : for, although she 
had no eye for ideals, her observation of every thing 
that falls within the scope of ordinary sight was 
very quick ; and, moreover, although entirely un- 
conscious of it herself, she had a wonderful talent 
for giving exact expression to any secret misgiving 
he might have, and of suggesting comparisons dis- 
creditable to his ideals, without the least intention 
of wounding him. 

Mrs. Oldham had been unable to offer any 
objection to the window while it was in its ideal 
state, notwithstanding the Doctor's clearest de- 
scription of it, for the reason, as I have said, that 
she had no eye for ideals. But as soon as it be- 
came sufficiently real to be visible to her, she said 
to him : 

" Husband, I don't like it. It looks just like a 
shop-window." 

There it was ! She had hit the very secret of 



30 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

his dissatisfaction and made it shockingly palpable. 
He could no longer shut his eyes to it. That com- 
parison, too ! It was just putting his ideal into the 
pillory, exposing the child of his fancy to irretrieva- 
ble ignominy. He felt it acutely. 

"I wish, my dear/' he collected himself at 
length to say, "I wish you had said so in time to 
have had it made different." 

"I am sure," she replied, "I did not think it 
was going to look so." 

" I think it would perhaps have looked better," 
said he, fishing for a crumb of consolation, " if we 
had kept to the original plan about the recess." 

"Husband," rejoined Mrs. Oldham, "how 
would that have altered the shape of the win- 
dow ? " 

The Doctor saw she thought the question 
unanswerable ; so he said no more. 

He was in the right, however. Even the put- 
ting up of the bookcases on each side of the win- 
dow had something of the same ameliorating effect 
the recess would have had. And owing partly per- 
haps to this, and partly to the familiar sight of it, 
the window soon ceased to trouble Mrs. Oldham ; 
and the Doctor was not one to trouble himself 
about any thing that did not trouble his wife. He 



AT gkeyston.es. 31 

had a favorite dilemma lie was very fond of pro- 
pounding, to the effect that there are two sorts of 
things a wise man will never trouble himself about 
— namely, those which he can help, and those 
which he cannot help. He thought it an infallible 
recipe against trouble before he was married ; but 
since that event, though he was still as fond as 
ever of propounding it to his friends, yet somehow 
he had not the same faith in its universal efficacy, 
for it did not keep him, as perfectly as it should do, 
from being troubled at his wife's troubles. It was 
therefore fortunate for him — and he was sensible 
of it as a great blessing — that she was not prone to 
have troubles, and the few she did have were neither 
very great ones nor lasted very long. 

You are to understand, therefore, that on the 
whole, when everything was completed, the Doctor 
and his wife regarded their library with mutual 
satisfaction and content. And it deserved their 
regard in spite of the window. It was a well- 
lighted and remarkably cheerful room, fitted up 
with glazed bookcases on all sides saving the spaces 
taken up by the windows and by the doors — one 
opening from the hall, and the other into the Doc- 
tor's study. The whole finishing and furnishing 
was in every respect studiously simple and unpre- 



32 DOCTOE OLDHAM 

tending ; yet every thing was convenient, and the 
room had an air of thorough comfort and home 
enjoyment. 

This was precisely the expression the Doctor 
and his wife wished the room to have : for, though 
fitted up as a library, it was designed to be the 
living-room of the family — and their drawing-room, 
too, all they had ; there being no proper drawing- 
room at G-reystones. The little parlor on the right of 
the hall was altogether too small to be called any 
thing but a reception-room or ladies' morning-room. 
It was in fact the music-room, for Lilly Oldham 
had her piano there. The dining-room was a tol- 
erably good-sized one ; but the library was the 
largest room in the house — the only large one — 
not indeed a grand one, for the ceiling was too low 
for that ; but as to the rest, it would be thought an ■ 
ample library for a country house of five times the 
pretension of the Doctor's cottage. Most persons 
would doubtless have made it the drawing-room, 
but the Doctor was of a different mind. 

"Mrs. Oldham," said he, conversing with his 
wife before it was built, " we are not rich, and we 
are not so vulgar as to be ashamed of the fact. 
Our social consequence, at least in the eyes of all 
sensible and thorough-bred people, (and they arc 



AT GEE YST ONES. 33 

the only persons for whose opinion we care,) de- 
pends on ourselves and not on the money we spend. 
We can add one large room to our cottage, and 
only one. Let us not turn that into a show-room 
for fine furniture, too fine for e very-day use. Let 
us live in it and make it comfortable to live in. 
Let us fit it up as a library. I don't mean a 
grand show library for other people's eyes. Our 
collection is not large enough for my idea of a 
library of any pretension, and certainly our books 
are not fine enough in dress for a show library. 
But let us have our books here, such as we have — 
my books, yours, and the children's. It is so 
pleasant to have them always at hand in the room 
where we mostly live. Here we will pass the even- 
ings together ; here receive the friendly neighbors 
whom we like to have drop in upon us. Here, 
when by ourselves, we will pass the hours in cheer- 
ful chat, or grave discourse, or reading each the 
book that takes his humor best, or in that highest 
and finest of social pleasures — a charming book 
mutually enjoyed. To those who have a taste for 
good books, how can time ever hang heavy ? The 
winged hours fraught with the present pleasure of 
delightful studies fly away so swiftly, it would be 
mournful to consider how swiftly they fly, but that 
2* 



34 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

the memory they leave has no sadness in it from 
the thought they are gone. Many other joys 
perish in the fruition ; this is never a perished joy : 
such is the marvellous quality of it that not only 
the past lives in memory, but may be ever renewed 
with more than its first delight. There is no source 
of earthly enjoyment that I oftener or more fer- 
vently thank God for than that which is to be 
found in the genial companionship of good books. 
Let us rejoice, my dear, that we can command here 
the very highest and best society the world affords. 
And it is one that has a wonderful advantage over 
that vulgar product of mushroom wealth which 
calls itself society in the great town below. We 
can exclude all the bores and detrimentals of every 
sort, whether bad in head or bad in heart, or with 
no heart at all — all the brutes and all the insects, 
solemn or silly, taciturn or chattering, strutting or 
fluttering, droning or buzzing, or biting or stinging, 
that infest ordinary society. We can have our 
pick out of the finest spirits of eveiy age and 
nation — all those through whom the world has been 
made wiser and brighter and better. It is glorious 
company, those immortal ones ! We will cultivate 
a large acquaintance with them, yet not so large as 
an intimate one with those we like best. Let us 



AT GEEYSTONES. 35 

thank God for such choice companionship, always 
delightful in itself, always at hand, never giving us 
pain through vanity or caprice, and never changing 
from friendliness to coldness or ill-will. 

" And talking of the companionship of good books 
reminds me of one I am reading now, and of a pas- 
sage in it that I marked yesterday. It is in one of 
Southey's letters to his life-long friend G-rosvenor 
Bedford, and dated from his home among the Cum- 
berland hills just after his settlement there. There 
is not much in it, but still I was pleased with the 
feeling it expressed. Here it is : 

" c Coleridge is gone for Devonshire, and I was 
going to say I am alone, but that the sight of 
Shakespeare, and Spencer, and Milton, and the 
Bible, on my table, and Castenheda, and Barros, 
and Ossorio, at my elbow, tell me I am in the best 
of all possible company/ 

" So wrote Southey, at the age of thirty, from 
that G-reta Hall, where, pen in hand, he lived among 
his books for more than thirty years more, and made 
the name of his home a familiar and a pleasant 
name to all who love the memory of a good man 
and a genuine man of letters. What a love of good 
books he had. Think of it, my dear — a man with- 
out fortune, obliged to write daily for his daily 



36 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

bread, gathering around him more than fourteen 
thousand choice works, all "bought and paid for save 
those given him by authors and friends. The like 
case, I guess, cannot be found. And nothing could 
tempt him away from their companionship. He 
was made a member of Parliament without his 
leave asked ; but he would not take his seat ; — 
not that he was indifferent to public interests ; — no 
man watched the course of affairs with a keener eye, 
or did more to give direction to the public mind — 
as you may see not only in his works published 
with his name, but in the list of his thirty years' 
contributions to the Quarterly Eeview. Nor was it 
that he felt himself more delightfully at home 
among his books ; but because he thought he could 
do more good by staying there than in the House 
of Commons. I must read you his letter about it 
sometime — so sensible and so good : and I must 
also read you his letter to Sir Eobert Peel, declin- 
ing the Baronetcy offered him by the king, and the 
wise and right-hearted reasons he gives. 

" Yet Southey's love of books did not make him 
neglectful of any social or domestic obligation. 
His widowed mother sustained and cherished by 
him ; his younger brother educated and set forward 
in an honorable career ; his own family creditably 



ATGKEYSTONES. 37 

maintained, and his children fitted for the best 
stations in life ; his wife's sisters or sisters' children 
taken to his hearth and home ; — all this accom- 
plished by the labors of his patient pen ; and an 
honorable independence free from debt ever scrupu- 
lously preserved — show him a man fulfilling not 
only the strict duties, but the noblest charities of 
domestic life. I declare to you, my dear wife, if 
God spares my life and health, I should like to 
write a sketch of the life and writings, the genius, 
and character of Kobert Southey." 

"I hope you will do it, husband," said Mrs. 
Oldham, " it is a beautiful subject, and besides you 
knew him so well, and he was so kind to you when 
you were at school in England/' 

"Ah, if Irving would only give me the pen 
with which he wrote his charming life of Gold- 
smith/' said the Doctor in reply. 

" "Why, husband, your pen is good enough : 
you can do it as well as Mr. Irving, I am sure." 

" That is the delusion of an affectionate wife," 
replied the Doctor ; " but it does credit to your 
heart, my dear." 



b» DOCTOR OLDHAM 



CHAPTER V. 

GREYSTONE8 : AND WHAT DOWNING MIGHT HAVE SAID IF nE HAD 
nAD THE ALTERING OF THE PLAN OF IT. 

I think we are backing up to the proper starting- 
place. I begin to. have hope we shall, before many 
chapters, be able to get on in a way more satisfac- 
tory to the lovers of regular proceedings. We have 
gone from the library table to the library. A 
library (a private library at least, such as the Doc- 
tor's) presumes a house of which the library forms 
a part ; that is, if you understand by the word 
library what I mean, a book-room namely, and not 
a mere collection of books. The Arabs have fifty 
words to designate the lion. We have fifty mean- 
ings to some single words. I do not object to this. 
But I think it a grievance that we have not one 
word exclusively appropriated to denote such an 
agreeable thing as a comfortable, cheerful room, 
where one can find good books in plenty, and a 



AT GEETSTONES. 39 

plenty of all needful appliances for reading them at 
ease. 

We have now our library : I mean, you and I, 
courteous reader, have now the Doctor's library — 
not implicite, as before, but explicite — no longer as a 
thing presumed, but a thing set forth. I hope you 
like it. 

But, as I said, the library presumes a house ; 
the house a locality, and some determinate archi- 
tectural form and fashion — outside looks and inside 
dispositions ; also, environs, prospects, and such 
like things ; and, in fine, also inmates or a family. 
All these things must be reached by arriving back- 
ward in some way, which I am resolved to do in 
the shortest, that is, the straightest way I may find 
ability to do it in. 

The curious reader is doubtless eager to get at 
these things. But if he be at the same time an 
observant and discriminating one, he will notice 
that the promise is made in such wise only as an 
honest man, conscious of his peculiar infirmities, 
will ever make a promise to go straight : it is made 
with a qualification. I never drink any thing but 
water, and might safely promise in the most abso- 
lute way to keep to the narrowest straight line of 
literal foot-going ever marked out in space ; but as 



40 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

to going a straight line in writing — whether straight 
forward (which is the natural and proper way), or 
straight backwards (which is the only right way 
in this case) — I am so well aware of my propensity 
to go zig-zaging along to the right and the left, 
and of the feebleness of my will to resist any temp- 
tation that may lure me astray, that I never make 
any such promise without the reservation proper to 
one who knows it is an even chance his firmest 
resolutions may be of no effect. Let us hope for 
the best. The resolution is an honest one. 

The judicious reader will already have noted 
and put together a number of intimations in the 
foregoing chapters on all the matters in question ; 
so that I shall only have to fill up what is meagre 
and to supply what is deficient. 

The judicious reader already knows that the 
Doctor's house is a cottage, and called Grey- 
stones. The name was his daughter Lilly's giving. 
She has a fancy for bestowiDg pretty and appro- 
priate names upon every thing. She chose this, 
however, not because she thought it as pretty as 
some others, but because it was the most appro- 
priate one she could think of. For the house is a 
low, irregular cottage, of rough-dressed, dark grey 
stone — the walls covered with ivy, and the pillars 



AT GEEYSTONES. 41 

of the rustic verandas twined with honeysuckle 
and other flowering creepers. It is nestled down 
in a little sheltered nook on the Hudson, a little 
south of the old Dutch town near which it lies — so 
near indeed that the Post-office, the churches, 
and shops, are all within ten minutes' walk. Yet 
it is shut out from the view of the town by one 
of two small hills, which look as though they 
were once only one single hill, in shape like an 
inverted bowl, that had been split down in the 
middle and shoved apart, so as to form a little 
triangular valley with a wide opening towards the 
river, while at the apex or smallest end the faces 
of the split hill come so near together as to leave 
only an opening for a road into the tiny valley. 
The faces of these twin hills are almost perpen- 
dicular crags, with a few small cedars, dogwood, 
and other shrubs and wild-vines growing out of 
the seams and fissures of the rocks. The other 
sides are gentle acclivities clothed with cedars of 
some size. 

At the narrow end of this secluded little hollow, 
on the right hand as you enter it by the road be- 
tween the hills, near the face and under the shelter 
of the one that looks to the south-west, stands the 
cottage. The little hollow is, however, high up 



42 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

above the level of the river ; on the edge of the 
ridge, that runs back with a pretty sharp ascent 
from the water-side for nearly a mile before you 
reach the plateau where the town mostly lies ; so 
that, although it is shut in by the hills that 
flank it on the eastern side, it commands a 
view, not only of the hills across the river, doubling 
and trebling their outlines against the western 
sky, but to the south of a long reach of the river 
and the Fishkill mountain, that seems to bar all 
further progress of the water on its journey to the 
sea ; — while away up in the far north-west the 
Shawangunk and the Catskill mountains loom 
up — their sides relieved against the sky mostly by 
a darker blue, but often (in the winter) by a cover- 
ing of white. 

Greystones had undergone some alterations 
since the Oldhams canie there. They found the 
cottage quite small, and the rooms, with the excep- 
tion of the one they set apart for the dining-room, 
were not only of very tiny dimensions, but there 
were not enougli of them for the accommodation of 
the family ; so that the Doctor had to set imme- 
diately about enlarging his new home. And what 
with erections put alongside and erections put on 
top, it soon straggled out into a very anomalous 



AT GRKYSTON-ES. 43 

edifice, with all sorts of heights of stories and sky 
outlines ; yet within, it had a plenty of just such 
rooms as were wanted, and in just such connection 
with each other as they should be for the conven- 
ience of the family — not omitting the little study 
off the library, with the bath-room and dressing- 
room adjoining, which were the Doctor's special 
contrivance for his own particular convenience. 

Doctor Oldham had been his own architect, and 
thinking of nothing at first but how to secure the 
proper number and connection of rooms, had drawn 
some ground-plans, and set the builder to work 
upon them — leaving the whole matter of external 
effect to make the best bargain it could afterwards 
with himself and the builder, who was only v, com- 
mon carpenter, and the farthest in the world from 
a Downing or an Upjohn. So the result was some- 
thing not likely to be copied into any book of de- 
signs for model cottages. 

But within, it was so roomy, comfortable, and 
cheerful, that the Doctor was perfectly contented 
with his dwelling ; and would have been so, even 
if the outside had been ever so queer in the estima- 
tion of his out-door neighbors, provided its inmates 
were satisfied with it. But Mrs. Oldham liked it ; 
Phil liked it ; Lilly liked it ; Fred liked it ; and 



44 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

Cousin Kitty liked it — they all liked it as a whole, 
and each their own rooms in particular. 

Nor are you to understand that the cottage 
is at all what could be called grotesque or ugly. 
It is merely something a little out of the com- 
mon way in its appearance. But it has a certain 
agreeable harmony of its various parts, and a 
pleasing unity as a whole — expressive especially of 
a thoroughly modest and unpretending union of 
snugness and sufficiency, amplitude and comfort. 
And though so near to the town, and with but a 
few ^acres of domain, yet, what with being screened 
from it as they are, and with the wide and beau- 
tiful views they can command, the family have all 
that sense of rural life, that feeling of being in 
the country, which they love so much, and so 
largely enjoyed at Oldwood. 

As I like you, courteous and friendly reader, 
to have a clear and vivid image of every thing im- 
ageable relating to the Doctor, I have sketched the 
ground plan of his cottage somewhat after Down- 
ing's fashion — which I dare say you will be pleased 
to study a little. The elevation and perspective 
of the exterior, I cannot draw ; but I intend to get 
one of the Doctor's artist friends, Weir or Withers, 
to make sketches of it, both as seen from the foot 



ATGREYSTONES. 45 

of the lawn, and also from the east, as you first 
come in sight of it, when yon enter the grounds 
by the road. The plan shows the rooms on the 
first floor ; of the second, I give no sketch — the 
reader will please to imagine it divided into a suffi- 
cient number of convenient bedrooms. He will 
also bear in mind that the vestibule or entrance- 
porch is on the east side of the house ; the other 
side faces toward the river, and commands the 
views I have mentioned. 

This ground plan is one which I am apt to 
think the lamented Downing himself would not 
have disdained to consider. Indeed, I am ready to 
believe he would have pronounced it, in several 
respects, a very commendable plan. I presume he 
would have somewhat altered the disposition of the 
rooms. He might have made the library smaller — 
at all events he would have had a drawing-room : 
either converting the present library to that pur- 
pose, and taking the dining-room for a library, or 
else taking the dining-room for a drawing-room — 
in which case he would have lengthened it at the 
west end, putting in a large bay window ; and in 
either case, he would have taken Mrs. Oldham's 
room for a dining-room, enlarging it somewhat, 
and providing a room for her up-stairs. This done, 



4G 



DOCTOR OLDHAM 




AT GEE Y ST ONES. 47 

I think he would have written something on this 
wise: "A sensible, unpretending house; a judi- 
cious and convenient disposition of the rooms. 
Nothing appears to be wanting to the accommoda- 
tion and comfort of the inmates, who are evidently 
persons of refinement and culture. The size of 
the library shows the predominance of intellectual 
tastes in the family, and the general appearance 
of the interior — its dispositions and arrangements, 
indicate a love for domestic life, for refined pleas- 
ures, and the simple enjoyments of a quiet country 
home in the midst of a beautiful nature." 

So, I say, the lamented Downing might have 
written ; and it is as perfectly true of the Doctor's 
house and the Doctor's family, as though he had 
altered the plan in the way I have supposed he 
might. Indeed, I think the remarks better apply 
to the plan the Doctor and his wife fixed upon and 
carried out, and which I have given a sketch of for 
the inspection of the reader who takes pleasure in 
considering such plans. I am fond of studying 
them myself. I like to read Downing's books 
on country houses and cottages, and landscape 
gardening ; and I think we in this country owe 
him a great debt of gratitude — for he has done 
more than any other person to awaken and extend 



48 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

a taste for the beautiful in a direction which emi- 
nently tends to the improvement of the people in 
true culture, in happiness, and in goodness. 

In considering this plan, the reader will please 
to note that the Doctor's study is a lean-to, built 
against the library, and is lighted from the roof. 
This allows the conservatory to be built around 
it in the way indicated in the sketch. In cold 
weather, a hot-water apparatus in the cellar warms 
the conservatory, the study, and the library — 
although in the latter a fire is also kept in the 
grate for its cheerful looks. 

The consideration of this plan, as a whole, and 
especially the largeness of the library, the little 
study, the conservatory, the absence of a drawing- 
room proper, the music-room — in short, all the 
details will tell the judicious and thoughtful reader 
a good deal about the Doctor and his wife — their 
dispositions and tastes, and the ways and habits 
of the family. 

Thus it often is that things which at first 
glance seem to be mere facts, dead and barren, 
become living, seminal, and fruitful — to those who 
think. 

" O reader! bad you in your mind 

Such stores as silent thought can bring : 
O gentle reader ! you would find 
A tale in every thing." 



ATGKEYSTONES. 49 



CHAPTER VI. 

HENRY REED. — COLERIDGE ON WORDSWORTH'S VERSES. — THE DOCTOR'S 
THEORY OP THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN MAN AND THE BRUTES, 
AND ALSO OF THE EDIBLE AND POTABLE UNIVERSE, AS PRO- 
POUNDED TO PROFESSOR CLARE. 

Henry Keed, "Wordsworth's friend and genial 
editor, whose name calls up to the fancy of all who 
knew and loved him (and all loved him who knew 
him) the image of a man of most refined culture, 
of most intimate acquaintanceship with every thing 
choice in literature and art, of most pure and per- 
fect taste and judgment for every thing graceful 
and beautiful, true and good ; and more than all 
this, of a beauty of character such as is seldom 
seen and never surrjassed — nianly virtue (planting 
itself firmly on the ground of clearly seen principle 
to stand and withstand) united to a womanly 
tenderness and delicacy of moral feeling and a 
womanly quickness and rectitude of moral senti- 
ment ; — whose name recalls also the terrible images 
3 



50 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

of that afternoon of the 27th of September, 1854, 
when the ill-fated Arctic and her three hundred 
passengers (he among them) went down to a watery 
grave — images that will be ever vivid in the fancy 
of those who had dearly loved friends on board, 
although they have doubtless now grown dim in 
most others' minds (such is the effect of time, and 
of the intensity of our times, and the continual 
recurrence of similar catastrophes, the last one 
effacing the memory of the one that went before ) ; 
whose name is now so well and widely known, by 
those who knew him not when in life, through 
those exquisite products of his mind, those fruits 
of his academic studies and labors, which the hand 
of fraternal piety has given to the world — not all 
it will give, let us hope, now that the Chinese em- 
bassy is ended ; — Henry Keed has a note upon 
those lines of Wordsworth which I have given at 
the end of the last chapter. It is in his edition of 
the poet's works. It is mostly indeed a quotation 
from Coleridge ; and it is that quotation which I 
wish to quote, but as I quote it from Henry Keed's 
quotation, I cannot do so without being thus re- 
minded of him — what he was, and of the way of 
his sad loss to the world. Peace to the memory 
of one of the best and gentlest of men ! 



AT GEEYSTONES. 51 

" To have formed the habit/' says Coleridge, 
" of looking at every thing not for what it is rela- 
tive to the purposes and associations of men in gen- 
eral, but for the truths which it is suited to repre- 
sent — to contemplate objects as words and preg- 
nant symbols ; — the advantages of this are so 
many, and so important, and so eminently calcu- 
lated to excite and evolve the power of sound and 
connected reasoning, of distinct and clear concep- 
tion, that there are few of Wordsworth's finest pas- 
sages — and who of living poets can lay claim to 
half the number ? — that I repeat so often as that 
homely quatrain : 

" reader ! had you in your mind 
Such stores as silent thought can bring ; 
gentle reader ! you -would find 
A tale in every thing." 

Now the habit signalized by Coleridge is an 
eminent quality and a characteristic trait of the 
Doctor's mind. The universe of matter is to him 
only matter for reflection. He finds no interest in 
mere dead facts. To him indeed most facts are 
living, seminal, fruitful, or if not that, at least 
suggestive ; but, if neither — if utterly dead and 
barren — they are to him as nothing. 

The Doctor has however a way of talking some- 



52 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

times, which I cannot quite commend — particu- 
larly to Professor Clare, whose face often gets a 
very puzzled look in listening to him : indeed, it 
takes a man who understands the Doctor to under- 
stand precisely what and how much of serious 
meaning there sometimes is in his talk — how much 
is intended for sense and how much for nonsense. 
An instance which occurred the other day will 
illustrate this, as well as that quality of the Doc- 
tor's mind, which I have remarked upon ahove. 

Professor Clare happened to stay to dinner 
with them that day. They had roasted goose on 
the table ; and that set the Doctor off — not on a 
wild-goose chase, but on a flight into the regions 
of speculation touching the origin and significance 
of many of the old customs, such as the Christmas 
Goose, Shrovetide Pancakes, Good Friday Hot 
Cross Bunns, and Easter or Paschal Eggs. 

He had stuck the fork in the right place, but 
the carving-knife lay idly in his grasp, resting on 
the goose it should have been employed in cutting 
up. 

Mrs. Oldham and the children watched his 
flight, — Mrs. Oldham placidly, Lilly and Cousin 
Kitty with amused resignation, Phil and Fred with 
the comical expression of hungry boys trying to 



AT GREY ST ONES. 53 

behave properly under trying circumstances. What 
Professor Clare thought could not be told. He 
listened with an air of great interest. 

"Husband," interposed Mrs. Oldham, after a 
little while, " hadn't you better help us to some- 
thing to eat ? " 

She said this in her placid way, without the 
least rebuke or sarcasm in tone or intention ; and 
so the Doctor understood her. 

" Oh ! Ah ! Yes, my dear," said he, beginning 
to carve the goose, " I will postpone my remarks. 
It is ill-preaching to hungry folks ; for as the in- 
comparable Pantagruel saith to Panurge, c it is a 
most difficult thing for the spirits to be in a good 
plight, serene and lively, when there is nothing 
in the body but a kind of voidness and inanity ; 
seeing that the philosophers with the physicians 
jointly affirm '" 

The Doctor by this time had stopped carving. 
Lilly and Kitty exchanged glances, amused but not 
derisive (for they both held the Doctor in great 
love and reverence) * while Phil and Fred could 
hardly restrain the expression of their impatience, 
It was lucky for them their mother interposed 
again. She was the children's providence, the 
Doctor's good genius in general, and his gentle 



54 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

flapper in especial, in cases like this. And it was 
in the word "husband/' by which she always ad- 
dressed him, and in the way she spoke it, that the 
charm seemed to lie. 

" Husband/' said she, gently interrupting him 
at this point, " you have not helped us yet." 

" Bless me, no more I have, my dear/' replied 
the Doctor, coming fully to himself, "but I will 
help you all now and myself too, and we will eat 
our dinner before I say any thing more." 

He kept his word this time. A lively discus- 
sion of good things followed ; but altogether of a 
literal and practical sort. 

But as they were returning to the library, he 
began : 

"Professor Clare/' said he, "can you think 
that roasted goose and plum-pudding, turkeys 
and mince-pies, are merely food for the body ? 
Are they not also food for the mind ? As also all 
things edible and potable ? " 

"It may be so," replied the Professor, "in 
the sense of your Pantagruel, whose remark you 
quoted : the functions of our minds depend upon 
our bodies, and our bodies depend upon food. A 
man starved to death will not make much display 
of mind, nor a man faint from hunger a very lively 
one." 



ATGEEYSTONES. 55 

" But that is not the sense I mean/' said the 
Doctor ; " that is altogether a mere Pantagruelian 
view : it is of the earthly understanding, earthly. 
No, sir ; my opinion is that all things eatahle and 
drinkahle are food for the mind, through the capa- 
city of the soul to be thereby prompted and lifted 
up to spiritual reflections, as multifarious as the 
objects of the gustatory universe. Herein, in fact, 
lies the main distinction between man and the 
brute, and the only real eminence of the former over 
the latter in the matter of eating. Does it not 
seem so to you ? " 

" But some philosopher has made a different 
distinction/' said the Professor, " and defined man 
as a c cooking animal/ " 

" Do you happen to know the name of that 
philosopher ? " inquired the Doctor. 

" No," replied the Professor. 

"Neither do I," returned the Doctor, "but I 
hold him in small respect, whatever his name may 
be. Pretty philosopher, to find the distinguishing 
characteristic of man in an accident, which, even 
if it be an inseparable accident, does not come 
within a hundred miles of beginning to vindicate 
for human beings the attribute of reason ! 

" Besides, cooking or not cooking, is altogether 



56 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

an affair of the palate — a matter of preference : 
there is no room even for mooting the question of 
rationality about it — de gustibus non est disputan- 
dum, you know. It is equally rational for the 
"Welshman to like toasted cheese as it is for me to 
dislike it. And so it is just as rational for the lion 
to like his beefsteak raw as it is for the Englishman 
to like it underdone, or the Frenchman thoroughly 
done with truffle sauce, — full as human for the cat 
to take its rat uncooked, as for the Chinaman to 
cook his rat before he takes it. 

"Nothing, my dear sir, can be argued from 
such differences of taste. The crow is fond of 
uncooked carrion, the Fejee islander of baked man. 
Is the crow's taste less rational ? Would a pref- 
erence for cooked carrion make a man of the crow ? 
Would the Fejee islander cease to be a man, if he 
should come to like a piece of raw missionary better 
than a cut of cold roast ? Will anybody maintain 
this ? " 

" But may it not be questioned whether it is 
merely a matter of taste ? " interposed the Pro- 
fessor ; "is it not the ingenuity shown in cooking 
his food that the philosopher had in mind, when he 
made his definition ? n 

" Well, granting it to be so," replied the Doc- 



AT GREY STONES. 57 

tor, " is ingenuity in material adaptations an at- 
tribute belonging exclusively to rational beings ? 
No, sir, that cannot be maintained. If it could, it 
would only prove that there are rational brutes. 
For I am bold to affirm that the way in which 
many sorts of animals take and store away their 
food which they do not cook, shows vastly more 
sagacity than some tribes of human beings display 
in their modes of cooking their food." 

" All instinct," suggested the Professor. 

"No, sir," said the Doctor, "what I refer to 
cannot be called instinct. There are, it is true, 
very many wise doings of brutes that are matters 
of pure instinct — blind instinct, as all pure instinct 
always is. This sort of doings the animals that do 
them do not know the wisdom of ; — it is not their 
wisdom but their Maker's, that works in them by a 
law in their nature which leads them to do those 
things always invariably in the same way under all 
circumstances, and as perfectly the first as the 
thousandth time— as, for instance, the ways in 
which the different sorts of birds always build their 
nests. That is instinct. It is not of that I was 
speaking, but of cases where animals will vary their 
conduct as circumstances vary, adapt their con- 
trivances to sudden exigencies, take different means 
3* 



58 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

to-day from those they took yesterday to accom- 
plish the same end, because they find themselves in 
different conditions. This is not instinct. I do 
not say it is reason. I do not believe it is. But it 
is skilly it is sagacity, it is intelligence ; and it is 
the animal's own intelligence, their Maker's intel- 
ligence, indeed, considered as the gift of a faculty — 
and so is ours — but their own intelligence, as not 
working blindly and always in the same way, which 
instinct does. 

" If you would know all about this wonderful 
ingenuity of animals, go read Huber on Bees and 
on Ants — very remarkable books to be written by a 
blind man ; but he used his wife's eyes to see with 
(I believe), and his wife's pen to make the record ; 
and that is the reason, no doubt, why the books 
are at once so wise and so charmingly agreeable. 
Head, too, almost any of the books that tell us of 
the fox, the beaver, the elephant, and the dog, and 
you will confess that the ingenuity of many animals, 
in taking and storing their food, is greater than the 
cooking ingenuity of some human tribes. 

" So you see it will not do to defend that phi- 
losopher's definition on the score of the ingenuity 
evinced by man as a cooking animal. Ingenuity is 
not rationality ; and if it were, there are many 
species of brutes more rational than some men are." 



AT GREYSTONES. 59 

"No, sir/' continued the Doctor, "'it is not 
because he cooks his food that man is man ; nor is 
it any more because of any superior nicety of taste 
and neatness in his ways. 

" Such distinctions are arbitrary ; you cannot 
draw the line. 

" With what show of justice can you exclude 
the quadruped that feeds on swill, or the feathered 
biped that is fond of carrion, from the category of 
rational beings, and yet include the Germans who 
eat sauer-kraut, the Esquimaux who are fond of 
whale - blubber, or the Laplanders who esteem 
putrid eggs fried in train-oil a special delicacy — 
which latter fact I mention, not as of my own 
knowledge or reading, but on the authority of my 
friend Doctor Wilton, who is very seldom mistaken, 
and thinks he never is. 

" There are crows that like their fresh meat to 
lie by until it has acquired a game flavor. So does 
Alderman Grubbins — he always has his wild-fowl 
and venison laid aside until it is quite — tender. 
Is not the similarity of taste undeniable ? " 

" But there is a wide difference between them 
for all that," said the Professor. 

" I admit there is a difference of degree," re- 
plied the Doctor. " I will admit, if you wish — 



60 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

though I, for my part, do not see it — that the 
German taste is more human than the Esquimaux 
or Laplanders' taste, and the latter more so than 
the taste of swine and crows ; hut in degree only. 
And will you make the distinction hetween man 
and the brutes a mere matter of degree ? 

" The pig thrusts his snout clear to the bottom 
of his wooden trough, and roots and nudges its con- 
tents about with a grunt and gurgle of satisfaction. 
The little pig eyes of Alderman Gubbins twinkle 
with equal satisfaction — and of the same sort, as he 
ladles his turtle-soup out of a silver tureen and 
ladles it into his mouth with a gold spoon. Is it 
in the difference between swill and turtle-soup, or 
between the wooden trough and the silver tureen, 
or between putting one's nose into it or using a 
golden spoon — is it in these things, or in any of 
them, that you would find the essential difference 
between the pig and Alderman Gubbins. You 
surely cannot maintain this. 

" No, my dear Professor, it is in the capacity to 
reflect upon what he eats, to ascend to the spiritual 
by means of the sensible, and so to derive from the 
food of the body a nourishment for the soul — it is 
in this that the difference between man and the 



ATGREYSTONES. 61 

brute consists ; and only so far as he does this, is 
Alderman Gubbins superior to the pig." 

Professor Clare's face had, for some time, worn 
a puzzled look. So he made no reply — only he 
asked for the volumes of Huber, which he took, 
and shortly after went away. 

"Husband," said Mrs. Oldham, when he was 
gone, "you sometimes put off so much nonsense 
upon Professor Clare. Why do you do it ? " 

" Well, my dear," replied the Doctor, " there 
was a great deal of sense in it, as well as some 
nonsense — and truth, too, not of the smallest order, 
although some of the logic was no better than it 
should be — which is partly what puzzled Professor 
Clare. Comfort yourself, however : it will lead 
him to read those charming books, and so be the 
occasion of his gaining a great delight." 

I have given the Doctor's notion in regard to 
the edible universe ; but it was not of that alone 
he thus thought : the whole universe of matter was 
to him mere matter for reflection (as I have said 
before), and in a sort transfigured thereby. 



62 DOCTOR OLDHAM 



CHAPTER VII. 

SHORT, IF NOT SWEET. — DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE AUTHOR AND 
RABELAIS, AND SOME OTHER CELEBRATED WRITERS. 

The curious reader is doubtless now expecting me 
to go on, and give him the personal history of the . 
Doctor and his family ; because that is the next 
thing in order, according to the virtuous resolution 
of going straight backward to the beginning, which 
I recorded in the chapter before the last. 

I have not, I confess, a very high respect for 
that inquisitive eagerness to get at the personal 
history of everybody they see, which is so marked 
a trait in the character of some of my acquaint- 
ances. 

There is, however, one direction of this curiosity 
which I have a very cordial sympathy with. It is 
natural we should take a lively interest in knowing 
every thing relating to the personal history and 
character of those writers that have greatly delight- 



atgreyston.es. 63 

ed us and done us good — those benefactors to our 
minds and hearts to whom we owe great debts of 
acknowledgment, we can never pay here below ; 
whose names "breed in us perpetual benediction." 
The impulse to gather up every incident of their 
earthly lives, every trait and trace of their habits 
and ways, is spontaneous, and it is as creditable to 
the heart as it is natural. 

A feeling similar to this, will, I have no doubt, 
be very strong in regard to Doctor Oldham, in the 
hearts of a multitude of the readers of this book, 
long before they come to the end of it, if ever 
it come to an end. But at present it can hardly 
have begun to spring up. It seems to me it would 
be time enough to gratify it when it has grown fer- 
vent — when the sense of delight and benefit re- 
ceived from the many wise and beautiful utterances 
of his, which it will be my duty to record, shall 
have raised their love and admiration to the proper 
pitch. It would seem to me then a most laudable 
curiosity, which I should find pleasure in gratifying 
so far as I could do it with propriety. 

There are limits to such things. The Doctor is 
yet alive, and would never permit me to make this 
book the pretext and means of thrusting before the 
public the trivialities of his daily life — chronicling 



64 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

the names and ages of his cats and dogs and horses, 
and their ways and doings — unless there was some- 
thing really remarkable in them ; opening the doors 
of his dressing-room, and displaying his shavings 
and washings, the sort of soap and towels he prefers, 
his dentrifice, tooth-brushes, and back-scratcher, and 
other intimacies of his private ways — such as Kabe- 
lais, in his great unconscious simplicity and plain- 
ness of speech, might disclose to all the world, but 
which the Doctor would no more consent to have 
done than I should be willing to do. There is now 
and then a celebrated writer of our days, who is 
willing to do this for himself, and for other celeb- 
rities too, if he gets a chance. But let the Doctor's 
privacy be sacred until he is dead. Then let any 
foolish Boswell (not me) disclose what he will, so it 
be true : it will not impair the venerableness of the 
Doctor in good men's thoughts. For myself, I shall 
present the Doctor to the public only in such guise 
as he shows himself to all who may chance to be at 
his house. As to the rest, I shall not withhold 
any thing that may happen to fall from his lips 
relating to his past life, which I may have reason 
to think he would be willing to communicate to 
any inquiring friend. I make no doubt the reader, 



ATG KEYSTONES. 65 

if he be a judicious and not over-curious one, will 
be able to put together enough for his satisfaction. • 
I may as well say here that the Doctor is a 
man a little above the middle height — well built, 
though stout, and now somewhat inclining to ful- 
ness of habit. His large head is covered with a 
profusion of soft, curling hair, once light brown, 
but now turned nearly white. He has large, clear, 
light blue eyes ; but he is quite near-sighted, and 
always wears glasses. His complexion is fair and 
ruddy, and his countenance has an expression at 
once thoughtful and benignant — betokening a man 
of good sense and good humor, of a joyous and ge- 
nial social temper — which is eminently the quality 
of the Doctor's nature ; though he is apt to fall 
into fits of absent-mindedness, particularly when 
the speculative cast of his mind and the peculiar 
associations of his thoughts lead him off in some 
odd out of the way track. This it is which makes 
him so prone to dissertate rather than converse. 



66 DOCTOK OLDHAM 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE DOCTOR VISITS MRS. ROSSVILLE'S SCHOOL. — AND TELLS HIS "WIFE 
WHAT HE SAID TO THE LITTLE FOLKS THERE. — MR. GRIM. — 
HOW GOD TAKES CARE THE CHILDREN SHALL NOT BE HURT BY 
BAD CATECHISMS. 

" I have been up to Mrs. Kossville's school/' said 
the Doctor to his wife one evening. "It was a 
sort of anniversary, when the children get each a 
present of some nice book suitable to their age and 
intelligence. Why, Mrs. Kossville and the other 
ladies have gathered together more than sixty 
children, in that outlying district, who would other- 
wise be very poorly off for needful instruction." 

"Yes," said the Doctor's wife, "Mrs. Koss- 
ville' s heart is full of love and kindness towards 
everybody, and especially those who need any thing- 
she can do for their welfare. That neighborhood 
has reason to be glad she is so rich, and has so 
much in her power." 



AT GREYSTONES. 67 

" True/' replied the Doctor, " and her face is 
as full of sunshine and joyousness as her heart is 
of love and kindness, and this, together with her 
simple, unaffected, good-natured ways and words, 
has such a magnetic charm for the little folks that, 
combined with their delight in their presents, the 
room was positively filled with a perfect glory of 
sunshine and gladness. I declare it was really 
beautiful to see them all standing up, the smallest 
ones in front — and rows of bright faces rising one 
above the other behind, and blending their voices — 
tiny, tinier, and tiniest, but all joyous and hearty 
voices — in a hymn : 

All things bright and beautiful, 

All creatures great and small ; 
All things wise and wonderful, 

The Lord God made them all. 

The music was not absolutely perfect in time 
and tune, but it really was not the worse for that ; 
nor was every figure in the group as beautiful arid 
graceful as Greenough's Chanting Cherubs — though 
there were faces there as fine as any Greenough 
ever dreamed of; but the whole effect was high 
above any art of sculptor or painter to produce." 

" But what did you say to the children, hus- 
band ? " 



68 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

" Well, I dare say it would have seemed very- 
queer talk to many persons ; it would have made 
Mr. G-rim look more grim, and Miss Prim more 
prim, if they had been there. But I told the 
children I was glad to see them so glad about their 
books — that children did not formerly have so 
many books as they have now, but I was not sure 
they were any the worse off ; for the few they had 
were better read, and so did them more good, — 
while now they had so many there was danger they 
would read more than they could read in a way to 
make their minds grow ; — that it was a great deal 
better to read a few books over and over, again and 
again, than to run hastily through a great many ; 
— and, besides, there were a great many books for 
children nowadays, written with a very good in- 
tention, that were very poor stuff — not half so good 
for them as some of those old ones which some very 
wise people now think so foolish : that Mother 
Goose's Melodies, and Cock Kobin, and Jack o' the 
Bean Stalk, and Jack the Giant Killer, and Cin- 
derella, and Beauty and the Beast, and iEsop's 
Fables with the Cuts, and Berquin's Children's 
Friend, and the Treasury of Choice Old Fairy 
Tales, and the Story of Poor Joseph, and Kobin- 
son Crusoe, and Sinbad the Sailor, were a library 



ATGREYSTON-ES. 69 

for little folks which none of the wise modern books 
could make up for the want of — and I was glad to 
see them among their books ; though some of the 
new books were indeed as wise and good for them 
as any thing that could possibly be imagined — such 
as Hans Andersen's Stories, and Masterman Keady, 
and the Settlers in Canada, and Sir Edward Sew- 
ard's Narrative, and that exquisite little book, A 
Trap to Catch a Sunbeam, and other equally beau- 
tiful stories by the same hand, and the Boy Mis- 
sionary, and the Ministering Children, and some 
others that I could name — and I was glad to see 
them among the books to-day ; only this they must 
remember, that the more they read such books as 
the last two, the more dead their consciences would 
become, and the harder their hearts, if they did not 
try in some way, according to their opportunities, 
to imitate the good examples which touched their 
tender feelings so deeply ; — and as to the rest, they 
must have nothing to do with such books as Pro- 
fessor Savethought's Truth Brought Down, his 
Philosophy Made Easy, and Great Things Made 
Small ; nor with Mr. Silley's Series : the Child's 
Book of Physiology, of Natural Theology, and the 
rest ; nor with Mrs. Softly's Childish Hymns ; nor 
Mrs. Scarem's Awfulness of Infant Sin, and Sad 



70 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

Fate of the Little Sabbath Breakers, nor Miss 
Sharp's Profitableness of Piety — showing the wis- 
dom of serving God because He pays better than 
the Evil One ; — that they must never look into 
those books ; and, in fine, they must speak the 
truth, obey their parents, love their brothers and 
sisters, be kind to everybody, say their prayers, and 
remember always that they were God's cldldren and 
not the Devil's ; and that God loved to see them 
play if they played fair, and loved to have them 
have a good time playing as often as they could get 
it, provided they did not neglect any duty or do 
any thing wrong ; — that they should always try to 
do right because it was right, and not merely for 
any thing they might hope to gain by it, whether 
from God or from others ; and never to do wrong 
because it was wrong, and not merely from fear of 
what might come of it either here or hereafter ; — 
that the Good Lord loved them dearly, and had not 
a thought or a wish about them, but to have them 
good, and happy here and forever, and they should 
therefore live as His dear children, and try to please 
Him out of love ; — that they could not be good 
without His help, any more than they could lift 
themselves over the river in a basket ; — that it was 
sometimes hard to be good, harder for some than 



AT GRE YSTONES. 71 

for others, because their nature was not as favora- 
ble, (some being naturally more prone than others 
to get angry or out of patience, or to be sullen or 
resentful, or vain, or proud, or selfish and self- 
willed, or idle and unsteady,) but God did not 
think any the worse of them on that account, pro- 
vided they honestly tried to be good ; indeed, the 
harder they found it, the more God was pleased 
with them, if only they tried the more earnestly ; — 
and they must not be discouraged, or afraid of God, 
if they should sometimes stumble and fall into 
wrong (as most likely they would), but be sorry, 
and keep on striving to do right, and be sure that 
God would then love them just as tenderly, and 
forgive them, and make all allowance for them, just 
as loving fathers and mothers always do, and they 
would certainly succeed at last, for God's Good 
Spirit was in all their hearts to help every one to 
become good that honestly tried, and kept on try- 
ing. 

" There, Mrs. Oldham, that is the substance 
of my talk to the little folks — not a phonographic 
record, but a pretty fair report — and how do you 
like it ? " 

" I think it is very good," said she, "but it 
sounds very different from Mr. Grim's preaching. 



72 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

He speaks of God in such a way as to frighten 
children from trusting Him, and so makes it im- 
possible for them to love Him ; they cannot help 
thinking of Him as austere, morose, and terribly 
strict — a foe to all innocent mirth and merri- 
ment." 

" It is all along of his mistaken notions of good- 
ness," replied the Doctor, " and partly of his nat- 
ural temper, and partly of his unhappy instruction, 
that he has such mistaken notions. He mistakes 
sanctimony for saintliness, strictness for religiousness ; 
and so it is nothing strange he should have a God 
after the fashion of such ideas. His way of repre- 
senting God was once characterized by one of a 
company of soldiers, after I had been speaking to 
them of God's love for them notwithstanding the low 
rank they held in the estimation of men, and how- 
ever deeply they might have fallen in moral degra- 
dation. The man thanked me for what I had said, 
observing that most of those who preached to them, 
spoke as if Christ might be their friend, but they 
must beware of God. 

" I told him I was sorry they should ever be so 
taught. 

" l Sir/ said he, ' they make God a Police 
Sergeant ! ' 



AT GEETSTONES. 73 

" That was the poor fellow's own title and func- 
tion at the post where his troop was stationed." 

" What is the function ? " asked Mrs. Oldham. 

" To keep a sharp look-out on the men, and 
bring them up for punishment for all neglect or 
infraction of orders/' replied the Doctor. 

" But how good God is. At first thought it 
would seem one of the moumfullest things. in the 
world that the little folks should be deprived of the 
sweet influence of right instruction — the blessed 
sense that they are God's dearly-loved children, 
and subjected to such teaching as Mr. Grim's — 
made to think themselves the children of the Evil 
One, and sure to fall into his clutches at the last, 
unless they should happen to be among the elect 
— which it was ten to one they were not. One 
would think their young life would be overshadowed 
and chilled to its very centre, by the great black 
horror of such a creed. 

" But God takes care it shall not be so. 

" If you chance to come upon a troop of those 
little ones out of doors at school recess, you will 
see them running, and scampering, and 'kicking 
up their heels like young colts let loose, and filling 
the air with the merry ring of their shouts and 
laughter. A strange spectacle and a frightful one 



74 DOCTOR OLDHAJI 

— in a right logical consideration of the creed they 
are taught — to see the doomed little wretches so 
joyous and thoughtless amidst the terrific chances 
of their fate ! 

" But God, the true loving God, is stronger in 
their hearts than their Catechism, setting forth a 
God worse than none, by all the difference between 
a bad one and none. 

" Let us rejoice it is so. 

" Let us be thankful that such unwholesome 
instructions enter so little into the life circulation 
of children's hearts, but roll off, for the most part, 
like the little pellets of hail from the windows, 
without any adhesion at all." 

" But, husband, do you think that the parents 
and elders really hold any such terrible doctrines ? " 

" Well, they think they do ; some of them only 
think they do, but in reality do not — they hold 
only the words ; some perhaps hold the doctrines, 
but without seeing or believing in the consequences. 
Which is another blessed thing. Then, too, being 
fathers and mothers has a wonderful influence : it 
is one of God's contrivances in behalf of little 
children. He takes care that there shall be a 
blessed inconsistency between a mother's head and 
a mother's heart, between a father's creed and a 



ATGREYSTONES. 75 

father's love : and so through God's love in them 
and their parents' love surrounding them, the little 
ones get a chance for a joyous childhood — unless in 
the midst of very unhappy outward circumstances. 
when will all those be friendly ! I never think 
of the social life of highly civilized nations, with so 
much sorrow for its evils in any of its other rela- 
tions, as in its bearing upon the unfolding of child- 
hood." 



76 DOCTOR OLDHAM 



CHAPTER IX. 

MORE TALK ABOUT CHILDREN. THE GOOD LORD'S CONTRIVANCES TO 

PREVENT THEIR BEING SHUT OUT OP THE WORLD OF FICTION. 

Mrs. Oldham had been sitting for some time in 
silence, her scissors busily running in and out the 
indented edge of a collar she was trimming for 
Lilly. Fred and his sister were on the other side 
of the table, each absorbed in reading — the one 
Ivanhoe, the other Miss Yonge's beautiful tale of 
Heart's Ease. The Doctor was looking over the 
newspaper. 

" Husband," said Mrs. Oldham at length, cast- 
ing her eyes upon the children, " how different the 
feeling among good people now from what it used 
to be about novels and works of fiction." 

" Yes," replied the Doctor, " they did not 
understand, in the days of your grandmother, that 
it is through the world of fiction children first enter 
into the divine and eternal world." 



AT GREY ST ONES. 77 

" Dear me ! husband, I am afraid I don't un- 
derstand you/' returned his wife. 

" I beg your pardon, my dear ; I was absurdly 
transcendental in phrase. I mean that it is from 
true fiction — from the living products of the creat- 
ive imagination, children get their first ideas of the 
wonderful, of a world out of nature, the supernat- 
ural and divine. True and pure fiction is the 
purest truth — the natural and necessary aliment 
for the young imagination, through the quickening 
of which faculty alone the other faculties of mind 
and heart are best unfolded, even if they can be at 
all unfolded in any other way." 

"A sad time then, in those old days, for the 
unfolding of the young mind and heart," said Mrs. 
Oldham ; " almost a hopeless case." 

" So one would say at first thought," replied 
the Doctor ; " but God watches over the little 
ones. He contrives compensations and protections 
where they are concerned. He does not let mon- 
strous doctrines and pious absurdities of prejudice 
altogether prevail over common sense and the im- 
pulses of love in parents' hearts. 

" In those days children were indeed made to 
study the Westminster Catechism for their Sunday 
(or as they called it Sabbath) lessons. Robinson 



78 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

Crusoe would have been much better Sunday read- 
ing for them ; they would really have gotten some- 
thing from it — something good and quickening to 
true religious feeling in their hearts. But then, 
God be thanked, neither the children nor, for the 
most part, their parents understood the Catechism : 
so the harm was small — rather in the good they 
did not get than in the harm they did. 

" But (as I said) there were compensations for 
the little people. For the younger ones the 
Primer, which contained the Catechism, contained 
many things besides — things that young and 
healthy minds could contrive to grow upon. There 
was that wonderful alphabet with its picture and 
couplet of verses to each letter, of which I remem- 
ber nothing bad but the opening : 

In ^darn's Fall, 
We sinned all. 

"This might have done the children harm if 
they had understood and believed, or tried to be- 
lieve the meaning it was framed to convey, or at 
least it might have perplexed and troubled their 
young thoughts. But I don't think they got any 
insight of that meaning, and so no harm ; nor 
would they, I think, if the couplet had been turned 



AT GREY ST ONES. 79 

into a quatrain by adding — what might with equal 
truth be added : 

In flain his Murthur, 
We sinned further. 

" There too was the moving ballad of the burn- 
ing of John Rogers, and the still more moving pic- 
ture of his wife and nine small children around him 
at the stake — the children's heads going down just 
like the steps of stairs from biggest to least, except 
the littlest one that was carried at the mother's 
breast. Other things there were too in that Primer 
which (without any purpose or consciousness, you 
may be sure, on the part of its makers) had the 
genial effect of good fiction on the childish mind 
and heart. 

" Then, too, the children, both younger and 
older, had the range of the Bible — perhaps the 
great Family Bible, containing sometimes most re- 
markable wood cuts or engravings, and even per- 
haps the Apocrypha, a marvellous addition to their 
treasures, although some of them were not allowed 
to read it on the Sabbath. The Bible ! full of 
stories — all novels and tales to children — some of 
them indeed not so suitable and salutary for chil- 
dren as Robinson Crusoe and other novels that 



80 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

might be namecl ; but very many of them of such 
beauty and interest as no other book can surpass : 
the stories of Joseph ; of Kuth ; of Little Samuel ; 
of David and Goliath ; of Daniel ; of Jonah ; — and 
those parables of our Lord, the Good Samaritan 
and the Prodigal Son, which make little people's 
eyes fill up and run over with sympathetic tears, 
so much do they quicken the imaginative faculty 
and touch the heart. 

" Then for week days there was the blessed 
nonsense of Mother Goose's Melodies, which the 
Good Lord (I cannot but think) took special care, 
through his hold on the instincts of mothers' hearts, 
that no black doctrines of predestination and de- 
crees, and no puritanical sourness of sanctimony 
should deprive the little ones of ; and as they grew 
bigger, there were iEsop's Fables, with those won- 
derful woodcuts, in the Spelling Books, where were 
stories too — such as the story of Poor Joseph (who 
had so many children to feed and so little to feed 
them with) and his little boy, who thought he would 
not eat his share of the bread, but die and go to 
God, that there might be more for his brothers and 
sisters — a story that has drawn many a tear from 
many eyes ; — and other stories, more than I can men- 
tion — all of them novels and tales and romances to 



AT GREYSTONES. 81 

the young. Besides this — and it seems to have 
been a special ( dispensation of Providence ' in 
favor of the young — it almost always happened, in 
some mysterious way, by nobody's procurement in 
particular, there went circulating through every 
neighborhood, stray copies of Cinderella or the 
Glass Slipper, Beauty and the Beast, the Transfor- 
mations of Indus, Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp, and 
Sinbad's Voyages, which somehow the pious fathers 
and mothers failed to see belonged to the class of 
books prohibited ; and so the little ones got those 
ideas of the wonderful and supernatural which, 
entering the childish mind through the imagination, 
in the garb of fiction, prepare it for divine eternal 
truths. Then too, God be thanked, there were but 
few children, in New England at least, that did not 
in some way, through His contrivance, get hold 
of Kobinson Crusoe — the most fascinating of human 
books to children at a proper age ; of the reading 
whereof observant persons would find proof in num- 
berless islands, not surrounded by water, where 
shipwrecked little people built huts and played at 
Crusoe and his man Friday with great delight, 
while their minds unfolded and grew in the joyous 
activity of their play. 

" So it may be seen w T hat providences and 
4* 



82 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

what compensations there were for children in 
those days when story books were few, and good 
people's thoughts restrictive and austere." 

" Well, husband," said Mrs. Oldham, " though 
one should be glad the prejudice against fiction 
as such no longer prevails, yet it seems to me chil- 
dren are nowadays exposed to very great perils of 
another sort, against which there are not so many 
kindly providences and protections. You would 
not like our children to have free range through the 
fictitious literature of the age ? " 

"By no means, my dear — certainly not while 
their taste and principles were unformed. Even 
if there were no bad books to be avoided, I should 
be sorry to have them lose the proper cultivating 
effect of works of true creative genius, by forgetting 
that c half is bigger than the whole/ as old Hesiod 
says. 

" Phil, my dear, may be safely left to himself. 
He never reads for mere story. His good taste is 
as unerring as instinct ; I have been surprised to 
notice how it leads him to avoid every thing that is 
not either of the choicest quality, or else for some 
reason necessary to be read by every man of liberal 
culture. 

" But as to Lilly and Fred, they devour books 



AT GKEYSTONES. 83 

for the mere pleasurable excitement of story, adven- 
ture, or incident. "We must look well aftei them, 
not only to keep them from books that are bad, 
but from too many that are good." 



The curious reader, impatient to know more 
about the Doctor, may think this chapter and the 
last one, a great breach of good faith and of the 
promise made two chapters before. 

But, in the first place, let him consider the res- 
ervation with which the promise was made. Then 
let him read the next chapter, and he will see that 
he is indebted to these for the information he will 
find in that. For it led the Doctor on to speak of 
himself, and what he said gave me something to 
relate of his personal life before I knew him. 



84 DOCTOR OLDHAM 



CHAPTER X. 

GLIMPSES BIOGRAPHICAL AND AUTO-BIOGRAPHICAL — WITH OBSERVA- 
TIONS INTERSPERSED THAT ARE WORTH A CHAPTER IN THEM- 
SELVES. 

" There can be no greater blessing/' continued 
the Doctor, after musing for a while, " than to be 
born in the light and air of a cheerful, loving home. 
It not only ensures a happy childhood — if there be 
health and a good constitution — but it almost 
makes sure a virtuous and happy manhood, and a 
fresh young heart in old age. I think it every 
parent's duty to try to make their children's child- 
hood full of love and of childhood's proper joyous- 
ness ; and I never see children destitute of them 
through the poverty, faulty tempers, or wrong 
notions of their parents, without a heartache. Not 
that all the appliances which wealth can buy are 
necessary to the free and happy unfolding of child- 
hood in body, mind, or heart — quite otherwise, God 



AT GREY ST ONES. 85 

be thanked ; but children must at least have love 
inside the house, and fresh air and good play and 
some good companionship outside — otherwise young 
life runs the greatest danger in the world of with- 
ering or growing stunted, or sour and wrong, or at 
best prematurely old and turned inward on itself. 

" My childhood was healthy and happy — a free 
and joyous beginning of life, with plenty of love 
and good books inside the house, and plenty of 
fresh air and good play outside, with boys and dogs, 
and ponies and kites, and hoops and footballs, and 
skates and sleds. All these blessings, I thank God " 
— said the Doctor, reverently looking upward — 
" were mine in abundance." 

I saw the Doctor's thoughts were going back 
over the past ; so I ventured an inquiry about his 
father, thinking he might be in a communicative 
mood. He was so, and went on. 

"My father (for whom our oldest boy, Philip, 
is named) came to this country from England near 
the beginning of the present century, and settled 
in the city of Boston, where he devoted himself first 
to the study, and afterwards to the practice of the 
law. After a few years he married a Boston 
woman, the daughter of a distinguished member 
of the bar, as admirable for her domestic virtues as 



86 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

for the charms of her person and mind. Following 
his English tastes, he fixed his home in a pleasant 
villa at Brookline, a little way out of town, but 
near enough for convenient access to his office. 
There I was born, in the last year of the admin- 
istration of Thomas Jefferson. 

" I consider my father to have been one of the 
happiest and most fortunate of men. He thought 
so himself. He had his own notions of the condi- 
tions of a happy life ; and they were all combined 
in his case. He had, first, uniform good health — 
the sort of good health and the spirits attending it, 
which result from a good constitution and good 
habits, particularly abundant exercise in the open 
air, mostly on horseback, in which sort of exercise 
he took great pleasure. Then again, he had some- 
thing to do which he liked to do : he liked his pro- 
fession — for the play of his faculties it demanded 
and gave scope to, and for the connection into 
which it brought him with the eminent men of his 
own degree. He was in the next place, free from 
ambition, avarice and envy — and blest with a com- 
petence that left him without a care. And finally, 
to crown all, his life was rounded with love : he 
was married to the woman he lovod, fitly mated 
with one who was to him a most true and loving 



AT GREYS TONES. 87 

wife ; they had loving children, dear to them both ; 
and a happy home, where no cloud of peevishness or 
ill-humor ever darkened the sunshine. 

" My father came to this country with strong 
democratic notions, imbibed from his intercourse 
with Kobert Southey, with whom he formed a 
friendship at Oxford that lasted through life. 
There he came also to share his friend's scruples 
about subscription to the articles, which involved 
the loss of a rich ecclesiastical living in the gift of 
the family, that had been destined for him, and put 
him upon the necessity of turning to some other 
career, and probably, in connection with his polit- 
ical predilections (so much at variance with the 
good old Church and State sentiments of his 
family), inspired him with the idea of coming to 
this country. 

" Time, and observation of the practical working 
of our institutions, disenchanted him of whatever 
was fantastic and extravagant in the opinions he 
had formed — yet without the reaction carrying him 
quite so far in the opposite direction as his friend 
Southey went. He came to see quite clearly that 
there is no charm or magic virtue in a mere form of 
government ; — that the form is nothing in itself ; — 
that the best government is that which is best 



88 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

fitted for the people ; — that of free governments the 
English is best for the English, and ours for us — 
provided it shall turn out there is wisdom and vir- 
tue enough in our people to make it the best. All 
which are the veriest common-places of sensible opin- 
ion nowadays, but which it needed a sensible man 
to arrive at gradually at that time, if in the fervor 
of generous youth, through hatred of despotism and 
oppression, he had been led to adopt such notions 
of popular rights, democratic institutions, and social 
regeneration, as my father had imbibed. 

" In my seventeenth year, my father, who had 
twice before visited England alone, took my mother 
and the children with him, to see their relatives 
there. His father, the Dean, was delighted to see 
us all ; and my father's conversion from what the 
good Dean naturally regarded as the deplorable 
errors of his early notions on religion and govern- 
ment, gave him unbounded satisfaction. 

" My father's grandfather, Sir Oldham Oldham, 
of Oldham Hall, a Baronet of very ancient family, 
had gone to his forefathers with undiminished faith 
in the intimate and indissoluble relation between 
the existence of the universe and the house of Old- 
ham — a faith that had been reverently handed 
down from a remote Saxon ancestry. But luckily 



AT GREYSTONES. 89 

for the universe, and particularly for that part of it 
within his orbit, it was also a point of honor with 
him to look upon his position and wealth as digni- 
ties and trusts to be upheld and discharged, rather 
than as mere personal possessions ; so he took all 
possible care and pains to be, and in point of fact 
was (not, however, without much formal amplitude 
of speech and procedure) an upright and useful 
magistrate and a good landlord, and was in turn 
much respected by his country neighbors, and look- 
ed up to with profound reverence and affection by 
the numerous tenants and laborers within his broad 
manorial bounds. 

" The vicarage of Oldham, which my father's 
scruples had made it impossible for him to take, 
had been given to a cousin of his. For more than 
three hundred years it had been as much a matter 
of course to see an Oldham at the Yicarage as at 
the Hall. That was the family way of making it 
all right about the great tithes. What if these 
went to the Hall ? The Hall gave the parish an 
Oldham for vicar. Was not that better than a 
parson sent to them by some Lord Chancellor, or 
other remote patron ? So from generation to gen- 
eration some younger son of the house of Oldham 
had been duly sent to Oxford, and duly brought 



90 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

back to the incumbency of Oldham vicarage — 
which, in spite of the impropriation of the tithes, 
was still a very ample and dignified living. My 
grandfather the Dean had held it, and it had been 
destined (as I have said) for my father, as soon as 
he should have finished his Oxford studies. My 
father's turn of mind which prevented his taking it 
was a sore disappointment to his father and grand- 
father, and a mortification to all the Oldhams : it 
had never entered into the mind of any of them to 
conceive the like before. Bat this soreness was all 
over now ; and we found ourselves welcome guests 
everywhere — at Christ Church, at the Vicarage, and 
at Oldham Hall, where my father's uncle, a new 
Sir Oldham Oldham, had succeeded to the dignities 
and duties of the head of the house. 

" When the time came for returning home, my 
grandfather prevailed to have me left behind to 
finish my studies at Oxford under his particular 
direction ; so I remained for four happy years 
within the walls of old Christ Church. The good 
old man was full of kindness, and if he could have 
had his way, would have kept me in England, be- 
lieving there was no academical, ecclesiastical, or 
civil dignity, to which with my abilities (as he was 
pleased to say), and the family influence, I might 



AT GBEYSTONES. 91 

not aspire. But my heart bid me back to my 
native land, and to the happy home of my child- 
hood — to which I returned, glad to find all well 
there, and glad to be gladly welcomed back." 

The Doctor paused, and fell into a musing mood, 
which lasted for some time — his thoughts, as I fan- 
cied, running along over his life since those youthful 
days. At length he broke silence : 

"How worse than empty is a life of selfish 
struggle ! To be born to an eminent place, with 
great work to do — that is something which those 
whose faculties fit them for the place and work 
may perhaps thank God for, though it has its 
great temptations. To be carried upward into 
the high places of the earth and invested with 
its distinctions and honors, without a selfish seek- 
ing for them, but merely in the sequel and result 
of brave and noble doing of the duty put upon us 
by God and man — like Washington — is something 
to be accepted with magnanimity, or enjoyed with 
modest satisfaction, according to one's temperament 
and tastes. To seek even a noble and lofty sphere 
of public action at the prompting of a great and 
energetic nature, conscious of abilities to render 
good service to one's country or to mankind and 



92 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

of the impulse to do so — this is something I shall 
not disparage or contemn. But a life of mere 
self-seeking vanity and pride — engendering envy, 
ill will, and all evil passions — wretched if success 
crown not its selfish struggles, and not made 
blessed by any success — what a miserable thing it 
is ! What is life worth without inward peace ? 
Which no selfish life can give." 

" But you have no life of selfish struggles, suc- 
cessful or unsuccessful, to look back over/' said I. 

"I thank God, no/' replied the Doctor : "if I 
have aspired to but little and done but little, I 
have no disappointed ambitions to embitter the 
recollections of the past." 



AT GEEYSTONES. 93 



CHAPTER XI. 

HOW NATURE SHOWS HER GLADNESS. JUNE AND JUNEFULNESS. 

WHEN A NOSE IS A GOOD THING. IS IT AN ORGAN FOR THE 

BEAUTIFUL. THE GLORIES OF OCTOBER. NATURE'S PICTURE 

GALLERY. ART AND ITS LIMITATIONS. MRS. OLDHAM ASKS TWO 

VERT GREAT QUESTIONS. 

Mrs. Oldham had been away for ten days, on a 
visit to her mother. The Doctor had been quite 
dull and stupid for the last two or three days ; but 
his mopishness vanished with his wife's return. 
She came back towards evening, just at the moment 
when one of those wonderfully gorgeous and beau- 
tiful sunset scenes was kindling up, which we 
have so often up here, particularly at this season 
of the year. 

" See," said the Doctor, leading his wife to the 
west window of the library, " how glad nature is to 
have you back again. Not that we are not all as 
glad as nature is ; but we cannot express it in such 



94 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

a rich grand way. See, the hills and the sky across 
the river are all aglow with many-hued blushes of 
delight — blue, gold, orange-colored and purple 
gleams of joy mantling the old rugged weather- 
beaten faces of the hills ! " 

" Nature is very obliging, as well as you," said 
Mrs. Oldham ; " she is very apt to conform her 
expression to the mood of feeling with which one 
looks at her. But that is a glorious sight." 

The next forenoon we were standing — Mrs. 
Oldham, the Doctor, and myself — in the veranda 
that shades the west end of the library, and which 
is built around it in a corresponding semi-octagonal 
shape. It was one of the finest of October days. 
The Doctor's spirits were as brisk as a bobolink. 

" Mrs. Oldham," said he, " how bright and 
calmly joyous nature is. What a mild satisfaction 
rests on her countenance. You can see it through 
the thin haze veil she has thrown over her face to 
soften the light of the cloudless sun. It is all 
along of your return." 

" What a beautiful month October is," said she. 

" Yes," replied the Doctor, " no month in the 
year, on the whole, is more agreeable to me than 
October mostly is in this part of the world. It has 



AT GKEYSTONES. 95 

not the special charm of May — the delicious feeling 
of soft, genial airs, after the sharp winds of March 
and the miserable chills that sometimes go through 
your bones and marrow in April. It is unlike 
June, when June is what it should be, with its in- 
effable, incomparable Junefulness — the blending 
of the rich green of its grass and foliage with its 
bloom and fragrance — a fragrance which makes a 
nose a good thing to have in the country (as Mr. 
Sparrowgrass might say), however undesirable it is 
in the city, a fragrance which almost elevates the 
nose into an organ for the beautiful. 

" Noticeable, by the way," continued the Doctor, 
going off at a tangent on a new line of thought — a 
thing not unusual with him, and one you may al- 
ways expect when you see him throw back his head 
and put his left hand to the back of his neck, and 
peer through his glasses at nothing in particular — 
"noticeable/' said he, "that we should have no 
right to speak of. a beautiful fragrance, any more 
than of a beautiful flavor — a soup or a sauce ; that 
there is strictly nothing beautiful in the world of 
sense but what is so for the eye or for the ear — 
that forms, or colors, or tones, or words, are, in some 
combination or other, the elements of every sensible 
object that we rightly term beautiful, the only ma- 



96 DOCTOE OLDHAM 

terials the creative power of the artist can employ 
to embody and express to the universal mind and 
heart the invisible and ineffable ideal, the beautiful 
in spirit and in truth. 

" My friend Pelham tells me of an acquaintance 
of his, an eminent musical man, who denies this, 
who says that the fragrance of the heliotrope ex- 
presses to him precisely what certain musical tones 
do. He is the only man I ever heard of holding 
any such notion ; and his experience, taking it as 
he states it, proves nothing to any purpose against 
the general doctrine. Yet I do not wonder at any 
one feeling reluctant to put the fragrance of flowers 
into the class of mere sensual delights. We do 
not feel so in regard to flavors. The delight of Al- 
derman Grubbins in the turtle soup he gobbles 
down and in the champagne he follows it with, we 
know and admit is but a swinish delight — whether 
he call his turtle and champagne beautiful or de- 
licious ; but when the gentle Amanda puts the 
sprig of heliotrope, or mignionette, or the bunch of 
carnations to her nose and cries c Beautiful ! ' dare 
you call it a swinish delight ? do you even like to 
say, it is a mere delight of the senses, highly refined 
indeed in its quality, but still something purely 
and wholly sensual ? 



ATGREYSTONES. 97 

" Yet, granting (as we must) that the fragrance 
of a flower is no part of its beauty, one thing is 
certain, that, for me at least, no flower without fra- 
grance is satisfactory, whatever be its beauty of 
form and color. I should as soon think of being 
satisfied with the lovely Amanda — her perfect 
form, her exquisite beauty of features and com- 
plexion — if she were made of painted wax or plaster. 
What the coursing life, what the soul is to Amanda, 
that the sweet fragrance is to a beautiful flower. 
When I am abroad in June, the thousand blended 
perfumes which the flowers exhale, seem to me not 
only the breath, but the soul of nature's iife ; and 
I almost feel as if I belonged to the world of beauty 
as much in virtue of my nose as of my eyes." 

" But what were we talking about, " said the 
Doctor, recollecting himself enough to be conscious 
he had wandered, but not enough to remember from 
where. 

" You were beginning to sing the praises of 
October," replied Mrs. Oldham, with a smile, " and 
were contrasting it with June." 

" Oh ! ah ! yes ! " said the Doctor, " October 
is not like June ; but it is delightful in the con- 
trast of its genial temperature, its fresh, dry, in- 
vigorating air, with the burning sun of midsummer 



98 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

and the im elastic enervating atmosphere of dog- 
days. You can walk briskly without getting un- 
comfortably heated, or you can saunter about at 
the slowest pace without any sense of chill. 

" But the great glory of October up here is in 
the face that nature wears — its day skies and sun- 
set skies, but especially its forests and wooded 
hills. 

" Can any thing be more exquisite than the 
scene that presents itself to our eyes now — both in 
near and in the distant view, in their union and in 
their contrast. This little valley widening out to- 
ward the river and forming our lawn, which we 
have dotted here and there with evergreens and 
flowering shrubs ; and that brook, winding through 
the close-shaven and still green grass, gurgling and 
sparkling as its stream breaks over the stones, and 
running rapidly away to the place where it leaps 
down the rocks in the cascade that Phil has made 
the most of. By the way, Phil has shown the skill 
of an engineer, as well as the good taste of a land- 
scape artist, in the way he has managed to enlarge 
that brook, by liberating the spring at the foot of 
the crag in the rear of the house, and to conduct 
the augmented stream through the garden and the 
lawn. That brook is a charming feature in the 



AT GEEYSTONES. 99 

foreground of the picture before us. Then on the 
sides of the crags that flank our happy valley, see 
the leaves of the wild vines that grow out of the 
fissures all turned orange and red in contrast with 
the green of the tiny cedars they run among and 
twine around. And then, farther away to the 
south, over those fields and woods this side the 
reach in the river, and across the river to the west, 
see the myriad hues of the forest trees. Can any 
thing be more rich and gorgeously beautiful ! To 
be up here, on such a day as this, on the hills and 
among the hills, and in the presence of higher hills 
and mountains, like those across the river, doubling 
and trebling their outlines as they recede in the 
distance in the cloudless sky, with the great sky 
lines of the Shawangunk and Catskills there on 
the farthest range of the horizon — it is positively 
glorious ! See, too, what a soft blue haze invests 
every thing in the distance — the fields and wood- 
lands and hills, and especially in the horizon where 
the land and the sky meet. It makes one think 
that nature is doing as a beautiful woman, when, 
at the prompting of the sweet instincts of woman- 
hood, she drops her veil before her face in modest 
self-respect and rebuke of your too admiring gaze : 
or, since this soft haze is too thin a veil to do more 



100 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

than heighten the charms which it seems to con- 
ceal, it may be that nature lets fall the thin blue 
veil only the more to draw and fix our gaze." 

" Ah, husband/' said Mrs. Oldham, " that's a 
bad fancy, that last image of yours. You should 
think of nature as too natural to practise coquet- 
tish arts." 

"Well, wife," replied the Doctor, "she is at 
any rate full of graces beyond the reach of art. 
Pencils of Claude and Kuysdael ! How much of 
beauty does one see on such a day as this which 
no painter can portray — the fluctuations of light 
and shade, and the perpetual stir and motion of 
the life of nature ; and even of the picturable 
things which the artist can fix and reproduce, what 
a series it would make — enough to fill a moderate 
cabinet — if we had a copy of all the different 
beautiful scenes our eyes can take in from this 
single point." 

" I wish we had," said Mrs. Oldham, " I should 
be delighted to have such a set of paintings : for 
although the pictures nature hangs out for us in 
this grand gallery are so beautiful, and although 
so much of this beauty — changing with the chang- 
ing seasons of the year, and shifting with the shift- 
ing lights and shades of every day is — unpicturable ; 



AT G KEYSTONES. 101 

still, does not the true artist, even in copying, 
heighten the beauty of such scenes ? " 

" Is it," replied the Doctor, " any heightening 
— any thing the artist adds to the beauty of the 
scene ? Is it not merely the peculiar pleasure you 
feel in seeing what nature gives you out-doors on 
such a large scale, copied and reduced to miniature 
by the artist ? The original is beautiful, and so 
the copy must be too. The beauty the same in 
both, the same must be the pleasure — so far as due 
to the beauty. Can there be any difference except 
in the special pleasure of tracing the likeness of 
the copy to the original ? " 

" I suppose not," said Mrs. Oldham, " that is, 
I suppose there can be nothing more in regard to 
any mere copy. But you do not mean to deny 
that the artist may not only heighten the beauty 
of nature, but make things that will be more beau* 
tiful than any thing that can be actually found in 
nature ? " 

" No," answered the Doctor, " there is an ideal 
in the mind which surpasses any thing actual ; and 
so nature and art both suggest more than they dis- 
play — reveal to the mind's eye more than is visible 
to the eye of sense — disclose the ideal in the real, 
the infinite in the finite. The artist is a maker. 



102 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

His faculty is creative. So he can and often does 
heighten the actual beauty of nature. It is too 
the necessity of his genius that he should strive to 
make things more beautiful than any thing that 
can be found in actual nature. But I would not 
say that his creations must needs be so, to be true 
works of art : yet certainly his function is to make 
things that have no exact counterpart in nature. 
Otherwise his faculty is not creative ; he is not a 
true maker. But the creative imagination can 
work only with materials furnished by nature, with 
images derived from sense either directly or through 
the fancy. The maker, the finite maker at least — 
whether poet, or painter, or sculptor, or musician 
— cannot create out of nothing. He must have 
sensible means — words, colors, forms, tones — to 
embody and express his thought. By the way, it 
is curious that the word poet — which means only 
a maker — should have come to be exclusively ap- 
propriated to the maker of word creations. All 
artists are makers too, and eminently such. Yet 
there was a time in which the word maker in our 
Saxon speech was used instead of the word poet, 
and was applied to word artists in the same 
exclusive or eminent way as the term poet is now. 
It seems to indicate a general feeling, as if word 



AT GREYSTONES. 103 

poetry were the highest order of artistic crea- 
tion/' 

" It seems to ine," said Mrs. Oldham, " unne- 
cessary and something invidious thus to put into 
comparison things that are different, rather than 
of unequal rank. But as to that Beautiful in 
itself, which is embodied in the finite maker's 
forms — what is it ? " 

" What else is it " — said the Doctor in reply — 
"what else can it be, but the reflection, more or 
less faint but always faint, of the infinite in the 
finite ? What is all Art but an attempt at the 
impossible ? ISTo sum of Unites can equal the 
infinite. The Almighty artist himself needs eter- 
nity and immensity to disclose the riches of His 
mind and thought. When will the disclosure be 
complete ? When will the Infinite pass fully out 
into the finite ? Eternally unfolding, but eternally 
undisclosed, is the infinite substance and source of 
Truth, Beauty and Goodness." 

"Husband," said Mrs. Oldham, "when did 
creation begin, and what was God's purpose in 
it ? " 

" We will ask Professor Clare about it some 
time," replied the Doctor. 



104 DOCTOR OLDHAM 



CHAPTER XII. 

PROFESSOR CLARE. — THE DOCTOR'S TALK ABOUT THE STARRY HEAV- 
ENS. ADDISON AND SHAKSPEARE. WORD-PAINTING AND OTHER 

PAINTING. WHERE THE UNIVERSE ENDS AND HOW IT IS FILLED. 

MRS. OLDHAM'S TWO QUESTIONS ARE NOT ANSWERED. 

Professor Clare came in that evening to tea. 
He is the Doctor's neighbor, an alert little man 
with curly black hair and bright eyes, who, besides 
knowing Greek (his special profession), knows 
pretty nearly every thing else that is going on in 
the neighborhood, and in the world at large, for 
that matter, so far as a daily reading of the New 
York Daily Times can keep a man up with the 
times. He is a fluent utterer of the current 
common-places of opinion and sentiment upon all 
such things as are made matters of opinion and 
sentiment in his world and among those he has 
mostly lived with ; and also thinks he has a 
thought or two upon profounder matters of the- 
ology and philosophy gained many years ago — dur- 



AT GKEYSTONES. 105 

ing his last year at college in fact, where he went 
in succession through Locke, Edwards and Paley, 
Keid, Stewart, and Butler, making daily recita- 
tions out of them to the President, the Keverend 
Doctor Dort, but without getting much clear in- 
sight into the differences that divide those celebra- 
ted writers — owing, perhaps, to the fact that the 
venerable President appeared to hold all those 
authors as thinkers of equal and harmonious au- 
thority, requiring of the students a respectful re- 
collection of their words, rather than encouraging 
any perplexing inquiries about their meaning and 
agreement with each other. Venerable Doctor 
Dort ! He slept well through life ; and has slept 
peacefully in the resting-place where his reverend 
head has reposed for nearly thirty years, in the 

cemetery of W College — where (not in the 

cemetery, but in the college) Mr. Clare afterwards 
for some years held the professorship of Greek — 
cherishing a filial reverence for the venerable slum- 
berer as the " guide, philosopher, and friend," 
through whose guidance, philosophy, and friend- 
ship, he explored the deepest regions of the world 
of thought, and brought back specimens and me- 
mentoes which he sometimes takes pleasure (like 

most travellers) in showing to his friends. 
5* 



106 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

But Greek was his profession ; and Greek is his 
great love — a love that betrays itself at times in 
mixed society, at dinner and tea parties, where he 
is a little given to favoring the company with illus- 
trations of whatever may be the topic of conver- 
sation drawn from those old sources, the sayings of 
famous Greek writers or the doings of famous Greek 
great men. But then he is such a thoroughly 
amiable good-natured man, and so full of pleasant 
chat that everybody likes him, and his absence 
from the tea-parties would be felt as a great loss. 

"Friendly persons/' the Doctor says, speaking 
of him, " always make friends, certainly among all 
right-hearted people ; and as to the rest, we all 
have our little foibles, as the Frenchman said when 
etc. ; and for my part, I think I like a friendly- 
hearted man the better for having a foible or two 
— provided, of course, that they imply no meanness, 
nothing dishonorable, but rather spring from warmth 
of heart, simplicity, confiding frankness, and an 
unaffected love for some respectable or harmless 
hobby." 

The etcetera above refers (I may observe by 
the way) to the Frenchman's particular foible — a 
remarkable taste in the matter of bouilli — which 
cannot be considered either as respectable or harm- 



AT GEEYSTONES. 107 

less, and which. I abstain from mentioning in full 
because I do not like to present an image to the 
fancy that might possibly be unpleasing to some 
of my gentle readers. Some things may as well be 
left unsaid ; even when it is not possible to avoid 
suggesting them. But in this case I have sug- 
gested nothing to those who have not heard of the 
Frenchman's little foible. Those that have, must 
not blame me (if the image be in any degree 
unpleasing to their taste), but the Doctor, and 
scarcely even him, but only the ill-luck that first 
brought the image before their fancy. The Doctor, 
however, is not squeamish about such matters. He 
likes to refer to this saying of the Frenchman, and 
often does so, always giving the etcetera in full — 
beause it gives piquancy to the common-place and 
so justifies its utterance. 

But Professor Clare and the Frenchman's foible 
have led me away from the purpose of the chapter 
— which was to record the talk that fell out this 
evening — and to this I must return. 

Tea was served (as it always is) in the library, 
at a little table near the bay-window. "We sat 
looking out upon the golden sunset, and the gor- 
geous hues of the horizon on the tops of the hills 



108 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

across the Hudson, until the last gleam of daylight 
and twilight faded away. But it would not be 
true to say, as in Coleridge's lackadaisical (wilfully 
lackadaisical) sonnet, that " Eve saddened into 
Night/' For the night was any thing but sad. 
The sky was cloudless, and the air was just in the 
right state to give the stars the brightest possible 
twinkle, as they came out one after another. We 
stepped out upon the lawn to get a larger view of 
the brilliant sight. The whole concave, from hori- 
zon to welkin, was studded with glittering lights. 

" What a sight/' said the Doctor — " so glorious, 
yet so still ! How silently they shine." 

" Not without voice, though," replied the Pro- 
fessor. 



"What though in solemn silence all 
Move round this dark terrestrial ball, 
What though no real voice nor sound, 
Amid those radiant orbs be found, 
In reason's ear they all rejoice, 
And utter forth a glorious voice — 
Forever singing as they shine : 
The Hand that made us is Divine." 



" That's grand, isn't it ? That's the old Greek 
idea of the music of the spheres — the divine har- 
mony of Pythagoras." 



AT GREYSTONES. 109 

" Hardly that," said the Doctor, " since it is 
far from clear that the Pythagorean music of the 
spheres — which was a mathematical harmony of 
numbers — had any thing but an impersonal prin- 
ciple for the ultimate law of the universe, or rather 
for the ground out of which it was evolved in a 
purely necessary way : which would not be a very 
orthodox idea of God according to Addison's view 
of the matter. Still there is no doubt but this idea 
of the music of the spheres, which comes from the 
harmony of the heavenly motions, is very old ; and 
it is as poetic and beautiful as it is old. 

" But who has expressed it like Shakspeare in 
that moonlight scene in the Merchant of Venice : 



" Look how the floor of heaven 

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold ; 

There's not the smallest star which thou behold'st, 

But in his motion like an angel sings, 

Still quiring to the young ey'd cherubins : 

Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 

But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay 

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." 



" That's finer than your verses, grand as they 
are." 

" Why, I recollect now," said the Professor, 
"that Doctor Vox, in his celebrated lecture on the 



110 DOCTOK OLDHAM 

Cavalier, introduced both those passages, and 
praised the latter as the finest." 

" Yes/' replied the Doctor, " I recited them to 
him one day as we were speaking of something that 
led me to think of them and put them in con- 
trast. c Grand ! ' said Doctor Yox. ' I'll bring them 
into my lecture on the Cavalier.' I heard him re- 
peat his lecture afterwards, and found he had 
brought them in. Their logical connection with 
his subject was not remarkably strict, but they 
were delivered with an air, and made a good 
rhetorical point that told well. 

" But what exquisite grace, what simple idio- 
matic perfection of language, in that passage of 
Shakspare's ! What a picture it presents to the 
mind's eye ; and what a proof of the superiority of 
word pictures over form and color pictures, or 
rather, I ought to say, of the wider reach and 
greater variety of the power of words for the ex- 
pression of the conceptions which the poetic imag- 
ination gives form to : yet the secret of their 
power in the use of them is ever in using them as 
Shakspeare does — not as something fine in them- 
selves, but merely as instruments of expression, and 
the simpler the better, so they be fitly chosen, — 
and who chooses them like Shakspeare ? Words ! 



AT GREYSTONES. Ill 

Wonderful things are words — half spirit, half sense, 
so flexible, so various in their power ! The poet 
can body forth to the fancy or to the imaginative 
faculty in words almost every thing the sculptor or 
the painter can in form and color, and a great deal 
that form and color cannot embody. What painter 
could give adequate form to the picture that 
Shakspeare in these words puts before the mind's 
eye." 

" But sculpture and painting can sometimes do 
more than poetry can do," said the Professor ; 
" they can give us at a glance, vividly and per- 
fectly, many things which words can only imper- 
fectly express, and that not merely delicate va- 
rieties of outline and light and shade, but also 
thereby of moral expression, for instance, of a coun- 
tenance." 

" True," replied the Doctor, " and it is another 
advantage of sculpture and painting (as also of 
music) that they are, as my friend Weir says, more 
catholic arts, in one point of view — their language 
is universal ; they not only speak to the mind and 
heart of humanity everywhere in the matter of 
what they speak (which all art does), "but their 
language is one that is read and understood alike 
by the people of all different nations and tongues. 



112 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

" Still the proper effect of true art is rather to 
suggest the ideal to the mind's eye, than to repro- 
duce the actual to the eye of sense ; and besides, 
the poet, in embodying his conceptions of action or 
passion, thought or sentiment, is not limited like 
the painter and sculptor, to some fixed point in 
space and to some indivisible moment of time : and 
so I speak of poetry as having a wider reach and 
greater variety of power than the other arts. But 
I intend nothing invidious. All the arts are alike 
in their object, the expression of the beautiful ; they 
are heterogeneous in their means of expression, and 
so in some respects cannot be justly put into com- 
parison : Jieterogenea non sunt comjparanda ; a lily 
cannot be said to be whiter than a rose is sweet. 
I am sure, however, you will agree with me in say- 
ing that no painter can paint the picture which 
those words of Shakspeare paint for the mind's 
eye. The listening cherubs — form and color might 
picture them ; but that would be far from telling 
the whole story." 

" I think you are right," said the Professor. 

Mrs. Oldham had remained behind a moment 
or two when we came out. She is liable to neu- 
ralgia, and was afraid to be out, even on such a dry 
warm evening as this, without her hood and shawl : 



AT GREYSTONES. 113 

so she had stopped to get them ; and in her wo- 
manly carefulness had brought along also the gen- 
tlemen's hats. She now interposed : 

" you men/' said she, " talking abstract talk 
about pictures with such pictures before you as the 
sky presents ! If you must speculate, let it be 
about the stars. Think of them — such a multitude 
of worlds/' 

" There are as many on the other side of the 
equator/' said the Doctor, " which we never see ; 
and the dwellers on that side never see ours ; and 
from both us and them the sun hides more by day 
than the night reveals." 

" Then to think of them/' said Mrs. Oldham, 
" as such great worlds hanging on nothing, and 
moving about in such vast circles — so far from us 
that the light (though moving at the rate of nearly 
two hundred thousand miles a second) takes nearly 
three years to get to us from the nearest fixed star ! 
I was reading about it to-day/' 

" Where is that star ? " asked the Professor. 

" There it is," said the Doctor, pointing to it. 
"It is the brightest of those stars in the constella- 
tion called Centaur. And look, there is another 
star of the first magnitude — in the constellation 
Lyra — that very bright star ; it is called Vega, and 



114 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

is so far off that it takes twelve years for a ray of 
light from it to reach our eyes." 

" And how far would that make it from us ? " 
asked Mrs. Oldham. 

" More than seventy billions of miles," replied 
the Doctor. " But the light from a star of the sixth 
magnitude is ninety-six years in coming to us, and 
is nearly six hundred billions of miles distant ; and 
from a star of the twelfth magnitude (seen only by 
a telescope), the light is four thousand years on its 
way to us, and has to travel twenty-four thousand 
billion miles." 

"And beyond that you suppose still other 
worlds which no telescope can reach— don't you ? " 
asked Mrs. Oldham. 

" Yes, a billion billion miles beyond the farthest 
star which we behold, there are doubtless other 
worlds and systems — and so outward and outward 
— worlds upon worlds, systems upon systems." 

" Husband, where does the universe end ? " 

" Nowhere, my dear." 

" Is infinitude filled ? " 

" Yes and no." 

" Why yes?" 

" We cannot but think of that which we be- 



AT GEEYSTONES. 115 

hold as a part and a type of that which exists in 
the infinite abyss beyond our view." 

" Why no ? " 

" Because the infinite is infinite, and no sum of 
finites can equal it." 

" Are those worlds inhabited, do you think ? " 
asked the Professor. 

" I have no doubt of it," replied the Doctor. 

" I read a very profound and learned book," 
said the Professor, " that came out three or four 
years ago, going to prove the contrary, or, at 
least, that there is no good reason for the com- 
mon faith." 

" And it proved neither the one nor the other," 
said the Doctor ; " all it proved was — what every- 
body knew before — that the dwellers in those heav- 
enly bodies must be differently constituted from 
those that live on our earth in order to exist there : 
and so, because there can be no human dwellers 
there, the author inferred that there are none at all 
— an irresistible inference, indeed, provided it be 
taken for granted that God could not make living 
and rational creatures adapted to those worlds as 
easily as he has done so here ; which is a principle 
the writer does not prove and which I do not grant, 
so his argument goes for nothing with me : and on 



116 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

the other hand, the fact that God has filled our 
earth so full of various forms of life adapted to such 
opposite conditions, is a presumption he has clone 
the like in the other worlds. It is repugnant to 
my mind to suppose that our little globe is the 
only abode of reasonable beings ; I the rather be- 
live that the countless myriads of orbs that roll in 
the boundless depths of space, are full of dwellers 
of like order and many probably of higher degree 
than those that inhabit our earth/' 

" And to think, husband, that He who made all 
those worlds and filled them with dwellers, should 
watch over and care for each individual of us all, 
with that constant special care He bids us believe 
He does." 

" Costs Him nothing, my dear ; it is as easy as 
if the universe were a twenty acre lot, and you and 
I the only children of His care." 

" But why suppose such minute individual 
care ? " said Professor Clare. 

" Because," replied the Doctor, " it is best to 
consider God as at least equally as good as a good 
earthly father." 

" Let us go in," said Mrs. Oldham. 



AT GEETSTONES. 117 



CHAPTER XIII. 

MORE ABOUT THE STARS AND THE EARTH — PANTHEISM WHETHER ANY 

THING CAN BECOME SO SMALL AS TO BECOME NOTHING AND YET RE- 
MAIN SOMETHING TIME AND SPACE MRS. OLDHAM'S TWO GREAT 

QUESTIONS AGAIN, AND THE WAY THEY WERE ANSWERED. 

" Here is that little book about c the Stars and the 
Earth/ which I was reading to-day," said Mrs. Old- 
ham, as we drew around the library-table ;* " there 
are a great many beautiful and wonderful things in 
it about the distance of the stars, and the time the 
light takes to come from them to our eyes : but 
there are some speculations about time and space 
that seemed to me very strange, and far from true. 
But I don't think I understood the reasoning at all." 
" No matter, my dear, about what you did not 
understand," replied the Doctor ; "you understood 
all that was much worth your understanding — 
those facts about the stars and light ; and as to 
,the speculations, your impressions were quite cor- 
rect. Have you read it, Professor ? " 



118 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

The Professor had never seen it. 

"It contains some novel and striking, some in- 
genious and beautiful things/' continued the Doc- 
tor, " but it is full of absurd confusions of thought, 
and of false assumptions grounded on them — lead- 
ing to the strangest contradictions. The writer re- 
gards the universe as God's thought — a beautiful 
idea, and rightly taken, true enough." 

" But it is Pantheism, is it not ?" said Pro- 
fessor Clare. 

( ' What is Pantheism ? " asked the Doctor. 

" Well, it is every thing God and God every 
thing," was the Professor's reply. 

" Both at once, do you mean, Professor ? n 

The Professor confessed he did not see any 
difference. 

" Well, you are not the only one that does not : 
but we will not go into that now/ 7 sakl the Doctor ; 
" I had rather ask you in what way that expression 
about the universe being God's thought strikes you 
as Pantheistic ? " 

" Why, it makes the universe exist in God," 
answered the Professor. 

" In Him we live and move and have our being 
— saith St. Paul," rejoined the Doctor. 

The Professor looked puzzled. 



AT GKEYSTONES. 119 

" How do you mean ? " said he. 

"Nothing," returned the Doctor, " except 
that you should not press upon figurative or am- 
biguous expressions a bad construction, simply be- 
cause it is possible. St. Paul was no Pantheist, 
yet you might in that way easily make him out 
one." 

By the way, this remark of the Doctor's strikes 
upon a vice, which I, the Doctor's editor, cannot 
help here remarking upon. It is the vice of a great 
many persons, especially of bigoted religious people 
with only a certain degree of education — half in- 
structed preachers — who hold a certain number of 
accredited formulas without any insight — who do 
not think, but only think they think, and are par- 
ticularly mistaken in thinking they are philosophi- 
cal thinkers. Such persons are very prone to raise 
an outcry against any thing that jars with their 
habitual notions, and to put the worst construction 
upon every thing that is not expressed after the 
fashion of their formulas. 

There is almost no amount of absurd mistake, 
or moral enormity of unjust censure which bigotry 
and prejudice, combined with ignorance or insuffi- 
cient instruction, may not commit. It is wonder- 
ful and pitiful there should be, in the highest eccle- 



120 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

siastical quarters, such a degree not only of the 
bigotry you might expect, but of the ignorance you 
would not expect. I recollect the case of a passage 
out of John Calvin's Institutes being denounced 
as rank popery, by one of the chief doctors at the 
oldest fountain head of the theological instruction 
of one of the great religious communions that claims 
John Calvin as its founder and guide, and the per- 
sons who had reprinted an old tractate in which 
that passage occurred (but without reference, and 
so the source of it was not indicated), were held up 
to the odium of all the old women in the land ! If 
the chief shepherds of the people — the teachers of 
the teachers — can do this, how will it be with the 
under teachers and the people they teach ! 

But Professor Clare was not a bigot, and the 
Doctor had no thought of intimating he was. But 
to go on with the talk. 

" You are right, as well as not right, in what 
you observed/' continued the Doctor. " It is pos- 
sible to construe the expression about the universe 
being God's thought, so as to imply the immanence 
of all things in God, — either as a mode of God's 
being — taking God as an infinite, impersonal sub- 
stance, or as a mode of His activity — making Him 
the only personal being ; the former destroying 



AT GREY ST ONES. 121 

God's personality, the latter ours, and both of them 
incompatible with the idea of any proper moral 
government. But it is not necessary to construe 
the expression in that way ; it may regard the 
universe as God's productive thought, the projec- 
tion of His activity, distinct and separate from 
Himself, just as the artist's picture is ; which I 
take to be this writer's idea, and so not implying 
any thing wrong in his way of thinking about God. 
And as to the rest, the spirit of his little book is 
thoroughly religious — its whole purpose being (as 
he says) to help us c imagine and completely un- 
derstand the universe to be the work of a single 
Creator.' 

" But the oddity of the thing is, that the author 
thinks the only possible way to do this is to show 
that c a point of view is conceivable, from which the 
universe no longer requires the expansion of time 
and space in order to exist and to be intelligible to 
us' ! And so he undertakes to establish this point 
of view, by denying the reality of time and space, 
or by proving that successions of events can take 
place in no time, and bodies can co-exist in no 
space ! And his reasoning is equally odd. He 
takes an indefinitely small time or space to be the 
6 



122 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

same as infinitely small, and both alike as equiva- 
lent to nothing." 

" It seems to me he is right in that," said the 
Professor. 

Ci The infinitely small is, no doubt, equivalent 
to nothing ; but it is so only because there can be 
no such thing as an infinitely small thing — the idea 
is a contradiction : and as to the indefinitely small, 
though it may be regarded as nothing, it is not 
really so. If you set out with a given duration or 
a given space, you can conceive them indefinitely 
contracted — and so far as any practical or scientific 
operations are concerned, you may regard them as 
reduced to nothing ; but you cannot conceive them 
as absolutely so reduced : it is a contradiction. — Is 
not this clear to you ? " 

" I cannot say it is," replied the Professor. 

" Well, then," said the Doctor, " can you con- 
ceive a wheel to be so reduced in size as to become 
no wheel, and yet continue a wheel, and to increase 
the rapidity of its revolutions to such a degree as 
not to revolve at all, and yet keep going round ? " 

"Yes, that is supposable, so far as our eyes 
are concerned," replied the Professor; "photo- 
graphy and the microscope illustrate it." 

" Completely, however," said the Doctor, " only 



AT GREYSTONES. 123 

on the supposition that an exceedingly small thing 
is nothing. But things may become so small as to 
be nothing to our eyes, and yet be very far from be- 
ing absolutely nothing. So you are partly right, 
partly not right, again. Photography contracts that 
pleasing picture of Queen Victoria's little girls into 
a space so small that our eyes can distinguish noth- 
ing, and our friend Doctor Pelham's microscope 
brings it back again distinct and clear. But that 
small point of space is still an expanse. Can 
photography make an image that would occupy no 
space ? Can the microscope reveal such an image 1 
In short, Professor, do you think it supposable that 
something can become nothing, and yet remain 
something ? " 

" Absolutely nothing and yet something ? — no. 
I do not so opine/' replied the Professor. 

" You would not think, then, that because the 
actions of an hour can be hurried through in half 
an hour, therefore they can conceivably be hurried 
through in strictly no time ? " 

" I cannot so think." 

" And you do not think that because my wife's 
fleecy shawl there can be compressed into a quarter 
of the space it now fills, it can conceivably be com- 
pressed into no space ? " 



124 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

"No." 

" You do not, then, find yourself able to con- 
ceive that, because every finite duration and every 
finite space, when compared with infinite duration 
and infinite space, e appears like nothing/ therefore 
they are strictly nothing ? " 

" I confess not." 

" Would you say, then, that e the proposition 
that for the occurrence of every given event, a cer- 
tain lapse of time is requisite, may be altogether 
rejected ' ? * 

" I would not." 

14 Then you would not, in like manner, reject 
the idea that some expansion of space is necessary 
for the existence and co-existence of bodies ? " 

" No." 

" You would not, then, hold that the myriads 
of worlds we have seen to-night can be conceived 
as occupying in absolute reality no space at all, and 
the events of their history as transpiring in really 
no time at all ? " 

u I certainly cannot hold such a thing con- 
ceivable." 

" And you would not consider such a concep- 
tion as a wonderfully fine and wonderfully impor- 
tant one — as being ' the only one with which and 



AT GREYSTONES. 125 

by which we can imagine and completely under- 
stand the universe to be the work of a single Crea- 
tor ? ' " 

" By no means can I so consider it," replied the 
Professor. 

" It is clear then/' said the Doctor, " that you 
do not agree with the remarkable thinker who wrote 
this remarkable little book, for he holds all these 
droll notions." 

" But how came he to fall into such notions ? 
Does he go upon nothing that is true ? " asked the 
Professor. 

" Oh no/' replied the Doctor, " that is never 
perhaps the case with any thinker. He only takes 
what is or may be true as to .God, as true as to 
us." 

" How do you mean ? " 

" God's knowledge may embrace all things in 
the universe — all things and events — at once with- 
out relation to Time and Space ; and this writer 
tries to make it out that the same thing may be 
conceivably true of us — which could only be by our 
becoming infinite like God." 

" What are Time and Space then ? " inquired 
the Professor. 

" The where of bodies and the token of events 



126 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

to creatures like us," replied the Doctor, " neces- 
sary conditions of knowledge for finite minds — 
conceptions without which, we cannot conceive of 
things and events." 

" But, husband/' interposed Mrs. Oldham, 
" there are my two questions that I put to you 
yesterday : you said you would ask Professor Clare 
about them : When did creation begin ? and what 
was God's purpose in it ? I want to hear about 
them." 

" Well, my dear, they are rather deep questions 
both of them. What say you, Professor ? The 
first one is rather the most puzzling, I imagine : 
When did creation begin ? " 

" Do you mean to ask when our earth was 
created ? " said the Professor. 

"No, I rather think my wife has not troubled 
herself with the questions raised by the geologists 
as to the duration of our earth : at any rate her 
question, I presume, has a wider range." 

"Yes," said Mrs. Oldham, "I was thinking 
last night, as I was looking at the innumerable 
stars, how far back the first act of creation took 
place, and when the first created thing came into 
existence." 



AT GREYS TONES. 127 

" It seems to me," said the Doctor, " there is a 
previous question : Did creation ever begin ? " 

" Certainly," answered the Professor, " we are 
sure it must have had a beginning, though we may 
be unable to say when — or how many ages back — 
that beginning was ; for that is a matter of fact, 
to be learned only from competent instruction, 
and not of reasoning to be reached by our own 
thoughts." 

" You mean," said the Doctor, " that as every 
thing that had a beginning must have had a cause, 
so every thing that had a cause must have had a 
beginning ? " 

" Yes," replied the Professor. 

" But you would hold it conceivable that the 
universe did not come into existence all at once, but 
may have been the product of successive acts of the 
Creative Will ? " 

" I conceive it may so have been." 

" And you would say, in regard to any particu- 
lar determinate product of creative activity, that it 
must have come into existence at some particular 
determinate point or period in the eternity of dura- 
tion?" 

" I should say so." 

" And you would consider that the very first act 



128 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

of creative energy was prior, not only in the order 
of thought but in the order of time, to the exist- 
ence of the first created thing ? " 

" I should so consider." 

" And you would say there was a determinate 
time in the past when that very first act took place, 
and that first created thing began to exist ? " 

" I should so say." 

" And how long had God then existed ? " asked 
the Doctor again. 

" From eternity, of course," replied the Pro- 
fessor. 

" And from eternity, then, to that time, you 
conceive of God as doing nothing in the way of 
creation ? " said the Doctor, continuing his ques- 
tions. 

" It seems necessary so to think," answered the 
Professor. 

" From eternity to that time, you conceive of 
infinitude, then, as void, or filled by God alone ? " 
said the Doctor. 

" I must so conceive," said the Professor. 

" From eternity, then, a solitary inactive God ? " 
inquired the Doctor once more. 

" Not necessarily solitary or inactive," replied 
the Professor ; " there was the society and converse 



AT GREYSTONES. 129 

among themselves of the Persons of the Blessed 
Trinity." 

" Humph ! " said the Doctor, "if a God with- 
out a universe from eternity be a satisfactory con- 
ception, why not to eternity ? " 

" But, husband, when do you say creation be- 
gan ? " interposed Mrs. Oldham. 

" When God began," replied the Doctor ; " at 
least I should say so, if I had any doctrine to lay 
down on the matter, which I have not." 

" But that would make creation eternal," said 
she, 

" And that would be a contradiction," said the 
Professor. 

" To the understanding, I know it is," returned 
the Doctor, " but it is more satisfactory to the rea- 
son than the idea of a God from eternity without a 
universe, and no more a contradiction to the under- 
standing than the received doctrine about the eter- 
nal wokd by Whom all things were made. To be 
God, and to be ever creative, seem to me ideas that 
go inseparably together, though the former is first 
in the order of thought." 

" But that would make creation necessary," 
suggested the Professor. 

" Not in your sense of the word," returned the 
6* 



130 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

Doctor ; " no more so than God's own existence, 
and nature, and attributes as the Living God ; no 
more so than the finite creations of the human ar- 
tist, which are the product of his artist nature and 
faculties — in one view necessary, in another free. 
It is indeed necessary that God should be what He 
is. God is Love : the necessities of Love are the 
freest activities in the universe." 

" But there's my other question," said Mrs. Old- 
ham. " I want to hear Professor Clare's opinion 
about it : "Why did God create the universe ? " 

" For His own glory," replied the Professor. 

" Do you regard that as His final end ? " in- 
quired the Doctor. 

" Yes," answered the Professor, " the display 
of His glory in the works of creation, and to the 
intelligent creatures whom He made capable of dis- 
cerning it." 

" Self-display, self-glorification is not regarded 
as a very respectable motive in finite rational crea- 
tures ; and can it (with reverence) be considered an 
end worthy of God ? " asked the Doctor. 

" But I do not mean a selfish display : the man- 
ifestation works the happiness of the intelligent 
universe," said the Professor. 

" Then the display is not the final end ; but the 



AT GREYSTONES. 131 

means to another end," said the Doctor. " But 
even the production of happiness is not the highest 
moral end conceivable." 

" But do you exclude happiness ? " said the 
Professor. 

" No," replied the Doctor, " the Stoics were as 
wrong as the Epicureans. The Supreme Good is 
in the union of Goodness and Happiness — but the 
goodness is the higher end of the two." 

" How do you regard the universe, then, in re- 
lation to God ? " asked the Professor. 

" As the work of an infinite artist, working out 
of Love. His creative work is indeed the reflection 
of Himself— revealing in countless myriads of finite 
forms His mind and heart — the highest product of 
His creative love being spiritual free creatures, the 
image of Himself, capable in their measure of con- 
ceiving in thought and of realizing in free will the 
ideas of Truth, Beauty and Goodness, of which He 
is the infinite substance and cause — a kingdom of 
which He is the Father and Lord, in which He 
dwells and over which He presides, that indwelling 
and providence being also a part of His artistic 
work. The universe is God's grand Drama, of 
which He is at once Poet and Manager ;— Infinitude 
the theatre ; Eternity the time of action ; the Con- 



132 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

flict of Good and Evil the secret of the plot and 
progress of the play ; the Triumph of Good the 
final end : — a Drama eternally unfolding in His eye 
— the stage, the scenery, the situations all arranged, 
and the actors called forth in their turn and time 
by Him. The kingdom of Nature — all its creatures 
and powers are the unconscious and passive instru- 
ments of His will ; hut in the kingdom of Spirits, 
His creatures have the high function and sacred ob- 
ligation of freely concurring with His design, and 
working for Him and with Him for the accomplish- 
ment of the final end. You and I and all spiritual 
creatures have our several parts, and to act well the 
part allotted to us, with a free and willing mind, is 
at once our dignity and our end, our goodness and 
our blessedness ; and so only can we become parti- 
cipant of the Eternal Life of the Living God/' 
" But what if we do not, husband ? " 
" Well, my dear, it is not God's fault. He is 
always within us for light and for strength. As to 
the rest, it is never too late to repent." 



AT GKETSTONES. 133 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE DOCTOR PREACHES TO HIS DAUGHTER — QUOTES WORDSWORTH AND 
GETS INTO HEROICS — ALSO HE FULFILS A SCRIPTURAL DUTY. — RE- 
MARKABLE STREET-SWEEPERS AND KNIFE-GRINDERS. COMFORTING 

DOCTRINE CONCERNING SHIRT MAKING AND STOCKING MENDING. 

Lilly Oldham is a great pet of her father's. I do 
not mean that her mother is not equally fond of 
her. She is so, but she does not show it in the 
same way. There is, I am apt to think, something 
in the quality of a father's love for a daughter, es- 
pecially for an only daughter, that begets a peculiar 
tenderness of manner, a certain caressing playful- 
ness, different from that which is prompted by a 
mother's love. Be this as it may, it is conceded, I 
believe, that fathers are apt to make pets of their 
daughters ; and Lilly Oldham being an only daugh- 
ter was not the less likely to be made one on that 
account. 

She is a bright-eyed, bright-faced girl of four 
teen, not regularly beautiful, but with a fine head, 



134 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

a noble forehead, clear dark eyes, a sweet sroile, a 
joyous laugh, and a countenance fall of expression 
— altogether more charming than any mere regular 
beauty ; clear, keen, and quick as lightning in the 
play of her faculties, but impatient of long-con- 
tinued a23plication ; generous and affectionate, im- 
pulsive and sensitive, but somewhat self-willed and 
inclined to amusement, and to indulgence of the 
mood and humor of the moment, rather than to 
profitable occupation, particularly in her reading. 
She gets indeed her school lessons faithfully and 
cheerfully enough ; but as to the rest, finds much 
more pleasure in novels and tales, than in books of 
history and travels, or works of solid instruction. 
The height of felicity for her, when in the house, 
is to sit curled up in a heap on the sofa, with one 
of Scott's, or Dickens', or Kingsley's, or Miss 
Yonge's books on her knees, and her near-sighted 
eyes close to the page, reading aloud to her brother 
Fred. It makes no matter apparently to either of 
them how often the book has been read before. 
The enjoyment seems indeed to be fresher with 
every new reading of it. 

Mrs. Oldham has always been aware of Lilly's 
faults, and has affectionately endeavored to correct 
them — not without success ; for there is a visible 



AT GltEYSTONES. 135 

improvement in her of late. But the Doctor, un- 
til lately, has thought of nothing but cultivating 
his children's qualities as playthings in his moments 
of leisure and relaxation — having perfect confidence 
in his wife's right guidance of them in all things 
else. He now rubs his eyes, and tries, he says, to 
realize that his little girl has grown so big as to 
need his care, but cannot rightly make it out. He 
admits, however, his duty, now that his wife has 
pointed it out to him, and tries to do it in the only 
way he can form any notion of — by preaching to 
her. 

" Lilly, my dear child/' said he one day to her, 
" we must all try to act upon principle and from a 
sense of duty." 

" But, dear papa, don't you think it is dread- 
fully dreary, the way some persons talk about prin- 
ciple and duty ? Don't you remember that divin- 
ity student to whom you said that the Good Lord 
was not so particular about some things as he was ? 
He thought it very sinful for children to play in the 
garden on Sundays, even after they had been to 
church and had learned their catechism and hymns 
at home. You told him that if the children thought 
it was wrong, of course they ought not to do it, but 
that you thought Our Lord was just as much pleased 



136 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

to see them scamper about the garden walks after 
they had got their Sunday lessons, as He was when 
they were getting them — provided they had not 
been taught to think it wrong, and so could do it 
with a good conscience. He seemed to be very 
much shocked at what you said. 

" Well, papa, I heard that same divinity student 
once say he always took his walks on principle, and 
laughed once a day from a sense of duty ! It 
sounded so queer ! I am sure you would not wish 
me to be like him," — she added, coming up to his 
chair and leaning on his shoulder, and looking into 
his face with half laughing eyes, — " I walk because 
I enjoy it, and love to see the trees, and flowers, 
and hills, and the water and the sky ; and as to 
laughing once a day from a sense of duty — it makes 
me laugh to think of such a thing ! I laugh a hun- 
dred times a day because I cannot help it. Only 
think of that divinity student, going about with his 
face so solemn every day and all day long, except 
that one laugh from a sense of duty ! It must be 
a dreadfully dreary laugh. I don't think I could 
join in it. It would frighten me just like the laugh 
of that stone image over the gate." 

" Very well, Miss Moppet," said the Doctor, 
with a smile, smoothing back her soft dark brown 



AT GKEYSTONES. 137 

hair and looking into her dancing eyes, " very well 
indeed, and cunningly put ; but you must not es- 
cape me in this way. I have no objection to your 
laughing as often as you cannot help it. I like to 
see it and to hear it. There is nothing dreary in 
your laugh, nothing to frighten one like a laughing 
stone image ; and I never knew you laugh when it 
was improper to do so. 

" As to the rest, I allow full scope for all spon- 
taneities and impulses, or — as I should say to you 
— for things that you do because you like to do 
them, or because you cannot help doing them. 

" But, my dear little girl, life was not given us 
merely for scampering about among the birds and 
flowers, laughing and singing and dancing — with 
plenty of nice stories to read when we wish to sit 
still. There's your French and Algebra, and other 
school lessons to be learned : I don't say but you 
do them well enough. But there's your musical 
practice which you do not take to as kindly as you 
ought. Then there's your needle-work that your 
mother wants you to become expert in. And then 
there are a great many books of voyages and trav- 
els, and biography and history and poetiy for you 
to read, which would be very pleasant to you if you 
would only once get well into them ; as well as 



138 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

some other books not quite so entertaining perhaps, 
but which you must read if you would be an intel- 
ligent, well-informed woman. 

" Now these things are duties for you. Yet 
you do not like them so well as some other things. 
I do not blame you for it. But what I want you 
to think of is, that it is just in regard to these 
things you must learn to live for duty rather than 
for inclination, to do what you ought to do rather 
than what you like best, if you would be either 
good or happy." 

"But what a pity, dear papa, that duty and 
inclination should ever clash — that what I ought to 
do is not always what I want to do." 

" That is, you are sorry, Lilly, that your duties 
will not always conform themselves to your inclina- 
tions ? " 

" How do you mean, papa ? " 

" I mean to ask whether you would bend your 
duties to your wishes, or your wishes to your du- 
ties ? " 

" Well, I suppose I was thinking what a pity 
it is that my duties would not be kind enough to 
stand aside, and let me have my way without staring 
me so sternly in the face all the time. That is not 
right, I know. But what a blessed thing if one's 



AT GREYSTONES. 139 

inclinations always went exactly along in the line 
of duty, without one's thinking any thing about it, 
or having to make any effort to go right." 

" Ah, my child," said the Doctor, " that is an 
angelical (as we are wont to say) and not a human 
goodness. In childhood there is always innocence, 
and in some sweet-natured and saintly children 
there is a spontaneity of goodness that shows so 
like the angelical, that it makes one sad to think 
of the interval that lies between innocence and vir- 
tue,— and that emerging from innocence is not al- 
ways a rising to virtue, and even if virtue do suc- 
ceed to innocence, so much of the former sweet 
gracefulness is likely to be lost. But then we are 
to remember for our comfort, that mere innocent 
spontaneity, however right in its direction and sweet 
and beautiful in its manifestations, is not goodness, 
either angelical or human. Human goodness is in 
this world for the most part virtue, — a manly energy 
in doing our duty in spite of temptations to the 
contrary ; and the harder the straggle — the strong- 
er, that is, the temptations and the poorer the na- 
ture we received in respect of temper and disposi- 
tion, appetites and passions — the greater the virtue 
if we do our duty. The good Lord has made us 
for virtue now, and so ordered our nature that vir- 



140 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

tue may in due time grow up and be unfolded, or 
transformed rather, into that angelical goodness in 
which reason and conscience, will and inclination 
will come to be at one, so that it will require no 
watchful care or painful effort to be good. Mean- 
time we must be content that duty is our law, and 
self-denial for duty's sake our virtue, and we may 
be thankful it brings with it its own unspeakable 
reward of peace and well-being too." 

" Duty," continued the Doctor, getting up into 
his unconscious " altitudes," as Phil called them ; 
" Duty ! great word ! noble and beautiful 
thought ! The faculty to think the thought, to 
speak the word, to feel its meaning and its power, 
attests our sublime destination. Duty ! It is itself 
but a purely ideal conception — tne idea of obliga- 
tion to do right because it is right ; yet purely ideal 
as it is in its essence, it is an idea which, when em- 
bodied and realized (as it may be) in men's pur- 
poses and actions, gives to human life and human 
history all its worth, all its nobleness — is the source 
of every thing most fair and beautiful and touch- 
ing, of every thing great, heroic and sublime. 

' Stern Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 
The Godhead's most benignant grace; 
Nor know we any thing so fair 
As is the smile upon thy face : 



AT GREYSTONES. 141 

Flowers laugh before thee on their beds ; 
And Fragrance in thy footing treads ; 
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 

And the most ancient Heavens, through thee, are fresh and 
strong.' 

" But bless me," said the Doctor, suddenly rec- 
ollecting himself, " how I have been running on — 
and out of your reach too, my dear little girl, is it 
not ? " 

" It is very beautiful, papa, and I think I un- 
derstand a good deal of it. But that about the 
flowers and the stars is not so clear to me." 

" Ah, my dear child, it means that it is nothing 
but obedience to the laws of their being that makes 
the flowers beautiful and fragrant, keeps the stars 
from getting out of place and the heavens from de- 
caying through old age ; and the poet gets very po- 
etical about it, and speaks as if they were alive and 
knew those laws, and followed them of their own 
will. But the thing he intends to signify to us is 
that Duty is the Law of our Being and Well- Be- 
ing, and we, who are above the flowers and the 
stars in knowing our law and in being able to fol- 
low it, must do of our own accord what they do 
blindly and of necessity — be obedient, that is, to 
God's will. 

" The lines are from Wordsworth's grand Ode 



142 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

to Duty, which you must learn, and I will talk to 
you about it some other time. But I will not go 
into any more heroics now. I only wanted to tell 
you that you must not be listless, nor spend your 
time in amusement, but must be busy to some good 
purpose. 

" And what an example you have in your 
mother, my child. In the twenty years we have 
lived together, I have never known her spend half 
an hour in listless idleness, or indulge herself in any 
book or amusement when there was any thing else 
that should be done. Here she comes now, with 
her work-basket full of stockings to be looked over, 
though I know she would like much better to go on 
with Irving's Life of Washington." 

" Mrs. Oldham, my dear," continued the Doc- 
tor, addressing his wife, as she came into the room, 
" I have just been obeying the Holy Scriptures in 
regard to you." 

' c How is that, husband ? " said Mrs. Oldham, 
in reply. 

" I have been praising you, my dear." 

" Is that a Scriptural duty ? " 

" To be sure it is. Don't you remember the 
place where the Bible speaks of the virtuous wo- 
man and of her husband praising her ? " 



AT GREYSTONES. 143 

" But what is such a woman to do, if she have 
no husband to praise her ? " said Mrs. Oldham. 

" But the passage supposes she has/' said the 
Doctor in reply. " Besides/' he added, " the very 
meaning of the word in the original tongue is wife 
and housemother." 

" But/' replied Mrs. Oldham, it is only said 
' her husband — he praiseth her ; ' does that neces- 
sarily imply that her husband is bound to praise 
her ? " 

"Certainly, my dear, if you look to the whole 
of it. It says also that ' she shall be praised ; ' 
and says it in a way which means that praise is her 
due, and surely due from her husband — one would 
say so even if he were not expressly named as the 
person that was to praise her." 

" But does it mean that my husband is to praise 
me ? " said Mrs. Oldham. 

" To be sure it does ; for you are a virtuous 
woman, a good wife and housemother. The house- 
wifely virtues of the nineteenth century differ in 
their form from those of the days of Solomon ; but 
the essence of them is the same. And you, my 
dear, possess, in the form befitting an American 
wife of the present day, all the virtues of King 
Lemuers mother's pattern woman — except that 



144 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

you do not keep your lamp burning all night and 
get up before day — a virtue I would not like you 
to possess. You are not an early riser, but when 
you are up, I am sure Lemuel's mother could not 
wish for a more exemplary model of industry, of 
cheerful household energy and cleverness— after the 
fashion of modern times. You do not indeed ' lay 
hands to the spindle/ nor your c hands hold the 
distaff' — those once indispensable and commenda- 
ble implements of feminine industry being now ob- 
solete ; but your exploits with the scissors and 
needle are a fair and proper offset. Nor can it be 
said of you, as of Lemuel's mother's heroine — ■ 

4 She maketh fine linen and selleth it.' 

" But then you make up the linen which you 
buy, and that is a great deal more than most wo- 
men nowadays do — and a saving of expense to 
me, perhaps a sufficient saving ; for the domestic 
manufacture of linen is gone out of vogue because 
the mills, I believe, make it the cheapest. Neither 
are you one who 



1 delivereth girdles unto the merchant,' 



home-made girdles (whatever they were) in barter 
for furbelows you cannot make ; but then you are 



AT GKEYSTOKES. 145 

mostly content with such furbelows as you can 
make — which comes pretty nearly to the same 
thing. And as to the rest, hearken to i the words 
of King Lemuel, and the Prophecy that his mother 
taught him ' concerning the virtuous wife : 



' For her price is far above rubies : 
The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, 
So that he shall have no need of spoil '— 



" No need, that is, of making forays upon the 
flocks of neighboring tribes, or of plundering trav- 
elling caravans — the Oriental mode of stocking the 
larder and replenishing the purse, equivalent to the 
modern practice of burglary, or going upon the 
road, or at least (which is about the same in mor- 
als) of seeking the ' spoils of office ' to make the 
pot boil — a necessity from which I count it a bless- 
ed thing the thrift of my wife exempts me. 
1 c But hearken further : 



She •will do him good and not evil 
All the days of her life. 

She stretcheth out her hand to the poor, 

Yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy. 

She is not afraid of snow for her household ; 

For all her household are clothed with double garments. 



146 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

She openeth her mouth with wisdom : 
And in her tongue is the law of kindness. 
She looketh well to the ways of her household, 
And eateth not the bread of idleness. 
Her children rise up and call her blessed ; 
Her husband also ; and he praiseth her, saying, 
' Many daughters have done virtuously, 
But thou excellest them all ! 
Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain ; 
But a looman that fear eth the Lord — she shall be praised. 
Give her the fruit of her hands ; 
And let her own works praise her in the gates.'* 



" There, Mrs. Oldham, that is you. And now 
go to your work-basket and stockings, and let Lilly ■ 
learn to be like her mother. " 

" Oh, what nonsense you talk, husband/' said 
Mrs. Oldham, laughing. " My work-basket and 
stockings I Elevated objects for which to live ! A 
noble usefulness, indeed ! " 

" Kail not, my dear," said the Doctor, — i: rail 
not even jestingly at the homeliness of your duties. 
The smallest, homeliest, humblest actions are en- 
nobled by the sentiment of love and duty. Think 
of the two archangels — one sent to rule the British 
realm, the other to sweep the streets of London, 
and both finding equal dignity and equal pleasure 
in the faithful doing of their work. Bethink you 
too with what joyous alacrity the cherubim would 



AT GREYSTONES. 147 

grind knives along the streets of our town, if set to 
do it by their Lord and ours ; and how well they 
would grind them too ! And not a single seraph , 
winging by on swift pinions upon some embassy of 
highest import to the realm-ruling angel, would 
have a thought of scorn for the faithful knife- 
grinder's, or the cheerful street-sweeper's place and 
work. 

" Look then upon your work-basket as a badge 
of dignity, and upon your scissors and needles as 
holy implements. Shirt-making is sacred. Stock- 
ing-mending is divine. 

" But I know your heart, my dear wife. Would 
you neglect your work-basket in order to be direc- 
tress or secretary to the Society for planting a Chris- 
tian coffee-growing colony at Borioboola Grha on 
the left bank of the Niger ? Eo, you would not, 
my dear. 

" "Would you let my shirts and Phil's go with- 
out buttons, in order that you might make flannel 
shirts for the benighted dwellers in Timbuctoo ? 
No, my dear wife, you would not. 

' c Would you let your children go about without 
warm stockings to their feet, in order that you 
might go about begging money to buy warming- 
pans for the children of the tropics, or even to buy 



148 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

Mount Yernon at ten times its proper price ? No, 
Mrs. Oldham, my dearest wife, I know you better. 
When your work-basket is cleared, you will go and 
carry comfort and coals to poor sickly Mrs. John- 
son, who has three children to maintain, and no 
way to do it but making pantaloons for the slop- 
shops at eighteen cents the pair. And you will find 
more honor and more pleasure in it than in unit- 
ing all the offices of the Ladies' Mount Yernon 
Association in your own single person. 

" And Lilly, my dear child, I hope you will al- 
ways be of your mother's way of thinking." 

" But surely, husband, you don't object to the 
Mount Yernon Association, and ladies holding of- 
fice in it ? " 

" No, my dear, not at all. The object is noble. 
I am only mortified and ashamed for my country 
that this should be the way of accomplishing it — 
that it should be left to the women to gather to- 
gether in such ways the money that ought to have 
been appropriated long ago by the nation. One 
million (out of the twenty that have been probably 
wasted this very year, in jobs corruptly given to 
President-making politicians) would have been an 
ample provision for the purpose. 

" No, my clear, it may be as fitting, as it is ne- 



AT GItEYSTONES. 149 

cessary, for some women to hold office in this asso- 
ciation : only it is not your vocation, any more than 
it would be mine to go about lecturing in its behalf 
— even if I could draw together such audiences as 
Everett delights." 



150 DOCTOR OLDHAM 



CHAPTER XV. 

WHEREIN THE DOCTOR SAYS PSHAW TO SOMETHING ADVANCED BY THE 
AUTHOR, AND ADVANCES HIS OWN NOTIONS. — COMFORT AND SWILL 
NOT THE HIGHEST FELICITY FOR RATIONAL BEINGS. — TnE WORLD 
NEEDS MARTYRS, BUT CROOKE RACKET NOT THE RIGHT TYPE. 

The Doctor is not of a turn of mind that disposes 
him to think as other people think ? and to do as 
they do merely because they think so and do so. 
He accepts nothing — save coin, bank-notes, what- 
ever passes for money — because it has the stamp 
of conventional acceptance, nor at the common 
valuation, unless it coincides with his own estimate 
of its intrinsic worth. Popular suffrages do not 
seem to have with him the weight they have with 
most persons, and are perhaps entitled to, particu- 
larly in regard to the public personages of the age ; 
indeed, I am afraid — if the truth must be con- 
fessed — that the admiring acclamation of all Bos- 
ton would not of itself be enough to convince him 



AT GREYSTONES. 151 

that this man was a great rnan ; statesman, and pa- 
triot, that one a great true poet, or the other one 
a great genuine thinker and inspired prophet — the 
rather as he' has, besides, noted that great men, 
bards, and prophets have in their generation "been 
sometimes undiscovered, sometimes vilified, and 
sometimes even crucified, while charlatans and im- 
postors have carried off the praises and prizes of 
the age. In short, it matters not greatly to him 
what the general opinion is, so far as the forming 
of his own is concerned. If he thinks as other 
people do, it is not so much because they think so, 
as because he has come to think so on grounds of 
his own. 

In all this the Doctor is simply and uncon- 
sciously honest. There is nothing of self-conceit, 
caprice, love of paradox, vanity, or pride of inde- 
pendence in him. He is no more inclined to reject 
than to accept the prevailing opinion merely be- 
cause it is the prevailing opinion ; and whether he 
agrees with the world or differs from it — in either 
case it is simply because he cannot help it. As to 
the rest, there is nothing of arrogance, bitterness, 
or intolerance in his nature. 

Professor Clare, unlike the Doctor, is always in 
happy sympathy with the prevailing opinion. 



152 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

Whatever all the world — his world, the " highest 
respectability " world — thinks, he thinks. Its creed 
is his creed, its law his law — not through reflection 
or any process of thought, but spontaneously, in an 
altogether unconscious way. It is just the consti- 
tution of his mind that he should, in all simplicity 
and godly sincerity, be of the same way of thinking 
with the world around him. 

It may not argue a high order of mind, or a 
very great force of character, but I confess I am 
apt to look upon this disposition of honest sympa- 
thy with the spirit of one's age, as on several ac- 
counts a felicity and a good fortune : it is such a 
saving of labor and trouble, and procures so many 
advantages of popular favor and good-will. I say 
honest sympathy — and I lay stress upon it ; for as 
there is nothing more despicable than hypocritical 
compliances prompted by a mere sharp look-out or 
mean instinct of selfishness, so I should be sorry to 
be thought capable of regarding any advantages 
thus acquired as a genuine felicity and a true good 
fortune. 

But as for that thoroughly honest sympathy 
which goes spontaneously along with the popular 
current, in perfect good faith without any selfish 
ends — there is certainly nothing dishonorable in it, 



AT GREYSTONES. 153 

and so the advantages that follow it are not against 
equity and right. What if the world does bestow 
equal favor upon the make-believe allegiance of the 
mean and base ? That argues, indeed, a want of 
discrimination in the world — also a universe some- 
what out of joint ; but is it any reason why Pro- 
fessor Clare should not enjoy advantages which in 
his case are not the rewards of baseness and mean- 
ness ? And these advantages are so many and va- 
rious that — as I said — I am prone to think it a 
good fortune whenever they can be honestly enjoyed. 
We all know what a favorite he generally is who is 
unaffectedly pleased with everybody ; and when one 
sees with the world's eyes, holds with the world's 
faith, and walks in the world's ways, he is in the 
way of receiving a thousand tokens of the world's 
good-will. Besides, it is so much more pleasant to 
go with the stream. Independently of the favor 
one meets with, one gets over the ground with more 
ease and speed if his path lies in the fc same direc- 
tion all the world is moving in, and has also the 
sense of companionship, which is comfortable when 
one likes his company. 

"Pshaw," said the Doctor, to whom I was 
making these remarks about the Professor the other 

day — " you are trying your hand at c considering 
7* 



154 OCTOR OLDHAM 

too curiously ; ' but the game is not worth the can- 
dle, it is analysis wasted, whether you really think 
as you say, or only amuse yourself with saying so. 
It is well enough for Professor Clare to be what he 
honestly is — seeing he cannot be any thing else — 
and to enjoy the consequences of being so, if they 
are matters of enjoyment to him. But let the 
dead bury their dead. How would it go with a 
world filled only with Professor Clares ? It would 
fare ill for human progress. Where would be the 
discoverers and inventors, the heroes and reform- 
ers ? " 

" Well," said I, "I was not setting up the 
Professor as the highest type of a man — I should 
be loath to stand godfather to his achieving any 
heroic exploits. But you must admit there are 
many inconveniences, discomforts, and perils in be- 
ing too much ahead of one's age, or in standing out 
all alone against it. Think of it. Even in our 
own times, through what obstacles had George Ste- 
phenson to fight his way : visionary madman, fool, 
quack, charlatan, impostor, were the mildest judg- 
ments he encountered from the highest scientific 
and practical authorities retained against him by 
the wealth and social influence of his country. 
How the pompous wise ones of Fulton's day shook 



AT GKEYSTONES. 155 

their empty heads in solemn derision of his vision- 
ary ideas. Think of Columbus struggling for eigh- 
teen years, amidst poverty, obloquy, contempt, and 
insult, against the learning, science and religion of 
his times, for leave to give a new world to the old 
one." 

" What of that ? " said the Doctor ; " they 
were better off than the Clares of their times." 

" You mean they conquered success, triumph, 
and the world's recognition at last," I rejoined. 

" No : independently of that," replied the Doc- 
tor, " they were better off in the midst of their 
trials. Exemption from discomforts and the enjoy- 
ment of the world's sweet voices is not the highest 
style of happiness." 

" Well, I suppose, then, it is not worth while," 
I continued, " to remind you of poor old Galileo in 
the dungeons of the inquisition for being so much 
wiser than the wisdom of his age, — nor of Socrates 
in prison compelled to drink hemlock for the same 
reason." 

" What of that ? " returned the Doctor ; " dun- 
geons and hemlock are by no means the worst 
things that can befall a man, unless it be a truth 
that man was made only for comfort and swill. 
Only as to poor old Galileo ; he was not quite as 



156 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

brave as Socrates ; if lie had been, he might have 
been a martyr of equal reverence — such as the 
world has frequent need of." 

" Need of martyrs ? " said I. 

" Yes ; sir/' replied the Doctor, "the world can- 
not get on without them — cannot otherwise well 
be brought to a stand on any perilously downhill 
course. No sacred cause especially can thrive well 
without martyrs." 

" But you would not have a man go about bat- 
tling the world, and inviting martyrdom, like Crooke 
Kacket ? " said I. 

" No," replied the Doctor, " a reformer ought 
to be wise as well as brave. If a man has a great 
sacred cause to carry against the world, a wise dis- 
cretion will often prompt many compliances and 
seeming compliances — reserves and withholdings — 
in order to get the world at advantage. But Crooke 
Kacket does not know the wisdom of reserves and 
' brilliant flashes of silence ' — as Sidney Smith says 
— judiciously interposed between the gleams of his 
artillery. If he knew how to prepare a good mor- 
tar bed, and get a good raking position, he might 
make a wonderful crashing among the shams and 
falsities of the age. But he fires off a forty-eight 
pounder right into a whirlwind, when he ought to 



AT GKEYSTONES. 157 

know it could not have the slightest effect to stop 
it. He runs his head plump against a stone wall, 
when he ought to expect nothing for it but a broken 
skull. He calls the world mad, in a way and under 
circumstances that, if he bad an ounce of discre- 
tion, he would see could not possibly result in any 
thing else than the world returning the compliment 
by a vote so overwhelming as to leave him in a mi- 
nority of one : and then because the world does 
outvote him, he likens himself to Luther, St. Paul, 
and even to Him of whom the Jews and His own 
kindred said He had a Devil, and was beside Him- 
self. But Crooke Backet is a fool ; and a reformer 
has no business to be a fool : only there is no law 
of the land against it — none but the law of the 
moral universe, that if a man will be a fool, he 
must take the consequences." 

" How many men of great parts does egotism 
spoil for true reformers and good martyrs." 



158 DOCTOR OLDHAM 



CHAPTER XVI. 

LOT'S HOUSE IN SODOM. — JONAH IN NEW YORK. — THE DOCTOR VILIFIES 
UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE AND AN ELECTIVE JUDICIARY IN A VERY 
SHOCKING WAY ; AND MAKES THE MOST UNSUFPOSABLE SUPPOSI- 
TIONS. AN EXTRAORDINARY TICKET FOR CITY OFFICERS. 

" My dear/' said the Doctor one evening, looking 
across the table to his wife, who was at the moment 
absorbed in a volume of Macaulay's History, " can 
you tell me the street and number of Lot's house 
in Sodom ? " 

" Bless me, husband, what makes you ask that 
question ? " said Mrs. Oldham. 

" Why, my dear, I have just been writing the 
address on my letter to your brother John, and I 
perceive I have directed it to West Twenty-First 
street, Sodom, and that made me think of Lot, 
and how near neighbors he and your brother might 
be." 

" I think, mother," said Phil, whose attention 
was drawn by this talk from the page of Chitty he 



AT GREYSTONES. 159 

was poring over, " you ought solemnly to remind 
my father that Lot is dead, and therefore he and 
Uncle John can't possibly be neighbors." 

Phil was an incipient lawyer and a presumptive 
judge — but at present much given to setting small 
witticisms on the back of other people's remarks. 

" Phil is like the celebrated Pox," said the 
Doctor. . . . 

" I am glad it's not the celebrated Goose," said 
Phil in an undertone. " I confess to 'being un- 
sound on that." 

. ... "Or the celebrated somebody else," 
continued the Doctor, not heeding the interruption, 
" of whom the great Pitt or the witty Sheridan — I 
shall not decide which — said he drew on his imagi- 
nation for his facts and on his memory for his wit. 
Phil's draft on his memory in this case, however, 
is a good one. Charles Lamb's four Scotchmen, 
springing up at once to set him right as to the un- 
reasonableness of wishing for Burns's presence at 
the dinner-table, instead of his son's, is one of 
Lamb's characteristic and exquisite touches of hu- 
mor. If his Scotchmen were here, Phil, they would 
perhaps have reminded me not only that Lot is 
dead, but also that he moved out of Sodom some 



160 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

time before his death, and before your Uncle John 
moved in." 

" But let me look at your letter, husband/' said 
Mrs. Oldham. 

He handed it to her. 

" I see/' said she, " you have got it down in 
your largest letters. It all comes from your always 
calling New York Sodom. Are you not ashamed 
to give such an ill name to my native place 7 " 

" Father's bump of veneration is not large/' 
said Phil ; " you ought not, mother, to be hurt at 
any thing he says. He has been heard to speak 
very disrespectfully of his own native place ; and I 
shouldn't be surprised to hear him call the capital 
of his country Tophet." 

" Humph, — draft on Sidney Smith this time/' 
said the Doctor. " But touching your native town, 
Mrs. Oldham, you have done it a great deal too 
much honor by being born there — though it was 
not then the Sodom it is now. It is a great conso- 
lation to me that you are so much better than your 
native place. It is not worthy of you ; and it has 
no proper appreciation of your worth. You are 
naturally unable to think ill of any body or any 
thing, and like all such good and kind-hearted per- 
sons as you are, you have, no doubt, many tender 



AT GEEYSTONES. 161 

memories of trie scenes of your early years : and 
so, I sometimes think you are not quite thankful 
enough for the privilege of being out of that bad 
place." 

" I am sure, husband, I don't wish to go back 
there to live/' said Mrs. Oldham. 

" I am heartily glad of it, my dear," replied the 
Doctor. "I should be inconsolably afflicted, if it 
were otherwise. If indeed it were possible — I 
know it is not, and I put it merely as a monstrous 
supposition — that you could desert your husband 
and go down there to live, after being once fairly 
out of the place, I should be tilled with the most 
distressing apprehensions. It would imply in fact 
an awful change in your nature, and would justify 
the worst forebodings. Why, Lot's wife would 
be a model woman compared with you. She 
never once set foot in Sodom after she left it with 
Lot. Could not stir to go hack — do you say ? 
There is no proof she wanted to go back, or would 
have done so if she had not been stiffened into a 
pillar of salt. Looked bach — did she ? Well, 
what of that ? That don't begin to prove that 
she wanted to go back, or would have tried to go 
if she had not been so fast fixed. It only proves 
that she wanted to get a glimpse of Sodom, merely 



162 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

to see how things were going on there. Pardon- 
able curiosity in a woman, particularly if you con- 
sider the smoke and sulphurous smell. Pardon- 
able, I say it seems to me. But she was punished 
even for that — stiffened into a pillar of salt, and 
planted there forever. And if she was thus dealt 
with for merely looking back, what and how much 
more dreadful must have been her fate, if she had 
wanted to go back, or had tried to go back, or had 
actually deserted her husband and gone back ! 
Think of it, my dear wife ! It makes me shud- 
der/ 5 

" There, that will do, husband : you have 
talked all this nonsense because I want to spend 
the Christmas holidays with my mother. Surely 
you do not wish me not to go ? " 

" No my dear — you have a mother living in 
Sodom. It does not appear that Lot's wife had. 
I cannot object to a short visit of filial piety. I 
shall calmly await your return. I cannot but be- 
lieve the city will be spared till you are safely out." 

" Well, take your letter then, and put it into a 
new envelope. Costs you that, and another stamp. 
Serves you right for talking such absurd stuff." 

" No, Mrs. Oldham, I am not going to lose my 
envelope, or my stamp. Kemember who it was 



AT GREYSTONES. 163 

that said c a penny saved is twopence earned/ and 
6 a pin a day 's a groat a year ' — which latter fru- 
gal truth comes specially home to the business and 
bosoms of your sex, my dear, who mostly use that 
abominable substitute for honest fastenings. I do 
not know whether that profane wag who divided 
the human race into men, women, and clergymen, 
has laid down the differential or distinguishing pe- 
culiarity of each several sort, but I am sure the 
definition of woman should be a pin-using animal. 
No, my dear, I shall waste no envelope, no stamp. 
I shall just run my pen through the word Soclom, 
and put New York under it, thus : 




?JofY?JL^^ 




PzmM/sz 



" Who knows what wholesome thoughts and 
fears leading to repentance and postponement of 



164 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

impending fate, its perusal by corrupt officials — 
clerks and carriers, may lead to. It may be like 
Jonah's preaching that saved Nineveh. It is not 
to be supposed that the sound of the prophet's 
voice reached the ears of all the Ninevites. His 
warnings were repeated by those who heard them, 
and so spread out all over the city. A little leaven 
leaveneth the whole lump. It would almost make 
me hopeful for the salvation of your native place, 
wicked as it is, but that I remember democratic 
institutions did not prevail in Nineveh ; and so 
when the Lord bid them repent, and the King bid 
them betake themselves to sackcloth and prayers, 
following his example, the people did as they were 
bid, and were saved. But catch the democracy of 
New Sodom tolerating any such interference with 
their sovereign power. Do you think Jonah would 
be safe there ? Wall Street might be too busy, 
Fifth Avenue too fine, to heed him or to harm him. 
But could he traverse the Sixth Ward unhurt ? 
Would he not wish himself safe in the whale's bel- 
ly before he got clear of Corlear's Hook ? The 
* Bowery Boys ' would they not convert him into a 
bag of sore bones ? And ten to one, would not 
some c Dead Kabbit ' leader finish him with six 
inches of inevitable dirk knife ? 



AT GREYSTONES. 165 

" And in such a case what do you think would 
become of the murderer ? Hanged — do you say ? 
Not a bit of it. He is far too useful in other ways 
to be put to such a use as that. Let that be for 
friendless negroes, and those who have no political 
influence. But this fellow is a citizen, a free voter, 
and at the head of a large band of powerful and 
well-armed voters — can control the result at half a 
dozen polls, through his skill and prowess in bring- 
ing up the right and keeping away the wrong sort 
of votes. He has no fears. He knows who have 
the making of all the public authorities, except the 
police, and mean to have the making of them again 
soon — for 'tis insufferable usurpation to deprive 
them of their indefeasable right of having every 
thing their own way. The police may arrest him. 
That is all they can do. He must be committed 
indeed, and go through the forms of law. It is 
the wisest course. It is attended with no danger, 
and it secures to rogues of the right sort other ad- 
vantages besides deliverance from the penalties of 
crime. It is good policy also in a larger view. It 
keeps up a show of justice and public order, and 
makes a great many pawns on the political chess- 
board more contentedly passive in the hands of the 
players, and so strengthens our incomparable free 



166 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

institutions. The ingenuities of the process fur- 
nish, moreover, a highly pleasurable variety of ex- 
citement to his friends and followers — to all sport- 
ing men, fancy hoys, the keepers and frequenters of 
those drinking and gambling places that are so fitly 
termed hells. 

" By all means then let the murderer be deliv- 
ered in due course of law. A purse shall be made 
up, and the smartest lawyers retained. Justice 
Sharpclaw shall send the man to prison. He un- 
derstands his part. Judge Wrestright shall grant 
a writ of habeas corpus. He cannot let the prisoner 
off with a fine of one dollar ; for he has not been 
contented this time with beating his victim half 
dead ; nor can he admit him to bail in the sum of 
five hundred dollars, although Alderman Poteen, 
keeper of the gambling house in the Flash ward, 
and Alderman O'Floggerty, emigrant runner, both 
famous for election rights, knocking down policemen, 
and the like exploits, are urgent to go his sureties. 
But if thought best, a sharp skirmish of writs and 
counter-writs shall take place, and during the in- 
tervals of proceedings the police in charge of him 
shall, on the intimation of the Judge, and for a 
due consideration, obligingly accompany him to his ' 
favorite haunts, and permit him to solace himself 



AT GREYSTONES. 167 

with champagne, brandy-smashers, and the smiles 
of the fair and frail. When the day of trial comes, 
if the judges should forget on whom they depend 
for re-election, the jury shall be found a safe reli- 
ance — that shall be well cared for. They will never 
agree in a verdict of guilty ; and so poor Jonah's 
murderer shall come safely off — the object of higher 
admiration ever after to his band, as the boy that 
settled that prating old prophet who was disturbing 
the city ! " 

" husband, how you run on," said Mrs. Old- 
ham. " You take as much delight in wilful hyper- 
bole as your quondam friend Sidney Smith. But I 
know what abatement to make." 

" Make none in this case, my dear," replied the 
Doctor. " This is not the rollicking humor of ex- 
aggeration. My fiction falls short of facts. The 
records of the last three years more than bear me 
out. No, Mrs. Oldham, there is no salvation for 
your native town while universal suffrage and an 
elective judiciary prevail there." 

" I am glad Professor Clare is not here to hear 
you say that," said Mrs. Oldham. 

" Professor Clare, my dear, has a great deal 
more softness of heart than clearness of head, and 
however shocked he might be at my opinions, you 



168 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

wouldn't need feel any alarm for my safety, if lie 
were here — which is more than I can assure you of, 
if I were to go down and proclaim my thoughts 
freely about the streets, in the primary meetings, 
and at the polls of your native town. Be comforted, 
however : I shall not do so. I shall take warning 
from Jonah's fate." 

" But, husband, Professor Clare says it is all 
along of your English prejudices, the way you dis- 
parage free institutions." 

" Professor Clare, my good little wife, is our 
neighbor, a worthy and kind-hearted man, for whom 
I entertain a very friendly regard, which nothing 
that he is ever likely to do or say will diminish. 
But Professor Clare is Professor Clare. He is an 
excellent Greek scholar, but he is not an historical 
philosopher, nor a philosophical statesman ; nor is 
he, so far as I have observed, a person who does his 
own thinking. His opinions on the most important 
subjects were adopted, not formed, and are of the 
sort most current in the circle of those with whom 
he lived at the time when men like him lay in their 
stock of opinions. Consequently he is a firm be- 
liever in democratic institutions, in the divine right 
of a free and enlightened people to recognize no 
higher law than their own will, and in the glorious 



AT GREYSTONES. 169 

future of our great republic, its c manifest destiny * 
to overrun and annex every thing that borders on 
it. 

" But Professor Clare is mistaken in regard to 
my English prejudices, as you could have informed 
him." 

" I did so," said Mrs. Oldham. " I told him 
that notwithstanding your English education, your 
prepossessions and prejudices were all in favor of 
our institutions when you came back ; and I told 
him, too," she added, with a gentle kindling of her 
placid eye, and a little flush slightly heightening 
the early-autumn peach bloom on her cheek, " that 
however sorry you were to see any thing going on 
in a wrong way, your love for your native country 
is as true and as warm as ever beat in any man's 
breast — and it was that very love which made you 
so quick to feel whatever might bring disgrace or 
danger to us." 

" Bravo ! little woman," said the Doctor, with 
a smile. 

- Lives there a man with soul so dead,' 

" or woman either, the poet might have said, only 

it was needless — all women becoming men in cer- 

tain poetical cases, just as they all become ( dearly 
8 



170 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

beloved brethren/ in the Prayer Book ; although I 
confess I always felt a little awkward in addressing 
thern so, when they were the only brethren at 
church — not an uncommon case at Wednesday 
and Friday prayers. But where am I wander- 
ing ? Oh, I was going to say you are right, my 
little, best friend ; I am wedded to my country as I 
am to you, ' for better for worse/ and my heart is 
faithful to my vows ; although it is proper for me 
to add that I have found it all better and no worse, 
as regards you, Mrs. Oldham. 

" I do not disparage free institutions — by which 
Professor Clare means our own institutions, for he 
has no notion that there are "any other free ones 
than ours ; — I only fear there is not virtue enough 
among us to make universal suffrage and an elec- 
tive judiciary safe. I am sure they whTnot do for 
our great cities." 

" Well, husband, I am very sorry you cannot 
be more hopeful for my native city/' 

" So am I. I like to hope for what I greatly 
wish for/' said the Doctor, " and still more for 
what you wish for ; but my eyes and my reason 
will not always let me do as I like." 

" But there are a great many good and excel- 
lent persons there — that is one comfort." 



AT GEEYSTONES. 171 

" True, my dear, you and I know a great many, 
and there are a great many more that we don't 
know — enough, as you see, to save it thus far : and 
unless they move out of it, as you and I have done, 
it may stand for some time yet. But it may he a 
real Sodom, for all that ; growing wickeder every 
clay, and as sure to he destroyed, sooner or later, as 
Old Sodom was — although not in the same fashion 
perhaps ; for the Almighty does not seem, since 
then, to have taken that method of destroying 
wicked cities — unless the fate of those two Koman 
towns that were overwhelmed hy the burning lava 
of Vesuvius be set down as examples of the same 
sort. They are mostly left to work out their own 
destruction, after a certain Kilkenny-cat fashion ; 
except when some strong-handed fellow comes in 
and puts a stop to the process by grape-shot, like 
him of the Eighteenth of Brumaire in Paris — which 
sort of salvation cannot so well be hoped for in the 
case of New Sodom, owing to the peculiar consti- 
tution of the State and General Government of the 
country. 

" Doubtless, as you say, there are a great many 
good people there. But how much good does their 
goodness do ? Does it control the city govern- 
ment ? Does it turn the scale at elections ? Does 



172 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

it put good men into office ? Does it stop the pro- 
gress of corruption ? 

" What does it do even to reclaim and convert 
the vicious and dangerous classes ? 

" It goes to church itself — it fills up a great 
many comfortable, a great many magnificent church- 
es every Sunday. But how many places of Chris- 
tian worship, of the humblest sort, does it provide 
for the poor and sinful in the quarters where the 
rulers of the city mostly live ? It gives ample in- 
comes — a fine house, and five, six, or seven thou- 
sand dollars a year — to its own favorite preachers ; 
but how many preachers does it maintain whom 
one thousand dollars a year would enable with glad- 
ness to carry the Gospel, and their own warm hearts 
with it, down into the damp cellars, and up under 
sharp-roofed garrets, to thousands who otherwise 
would never hear its voice ? 

" I speak not merely of the Pharisees — the 
highest class of professors of godliness — the long- 
garmented and broad-phylacteried, who, with their 
wives and children, fill up the sumptuous churches 
in the fashionable streets and squares, and thank 
God they are not like the publicans and sinners — 
which is all they care for them. It is not of such 
that I speak. There are a great many truly good, 



AT GEEYSTONES. 173 

loving and gentle-hearted persons, who are really- 
sorry there should be any wickedness or unhappi- 
ness in the world, and desirous to do all they can 
to make everybody as well off and as good as them- 
selves — who yet make a very mistaken use of their 
goodness ; partly because they are more afraid than 
our Lord was of coming into contact with poor sin- 
ners — which they need not be if their love was as 
great as his, — and partly because they have been 
wrongly guided, and so are very earnest in works 
of love for the Feejee Island heathen, and overlook 
the Manhattan Island heathen in the midst of them 
— are very liberal of their money to build churches 
in the new western States, and to send missionaries 
to China, while they forget that there are large dis- 
tricts of their own city — the abodes of filth and 
vice — where churches and missionaries are at least 
as much needed, and which it should, at all events, 
be their first care to supply." 

" But, husband, there are a great many persons 
of wealth and influence there now fully awake to 
this need." 

" Let them go earnestly to work, then," said the 
Doctor, "if they would save the city. It is in a 
bad way now, and universal suffrage and a judiciary 
elected at short intervals only make things worse. 



174 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

Why, suppose the Good Lord were to nominate 
Gabriel for Mayor, and a choice list of other good 
angels for Aldermen, Common Conncilmen, and 
Judges, and promise the people a good city govern- 
ment without a penny's cost ; do you think the 
ticket would he elected ? " 

" Dear me, husband, what a case to put ! But 
can you doubt it would be ? " 

" I hope it would, my dear, but depend upon it 
there would be an opposition ticket." 

" Ha ! ha ! " cried Phil, " imagine the placards 
headed, c Pure Democratic Ticket ; ! and the in- 
scriptions on the street banners : c No Theocracy ; ' 
c No Church and State ;' ' A Human Government 
for Human Beings ; ' and the speeches made in the 
Ward meetings on these watchwords and the foul 
language heaped upon Gabriel and the other good 
angels in the drinking-shops." 

" Stop, Phil," said Mrs. Oldham, " that is 
shocking ; you are worse than your father." 

" I think we've had enough," said the Doctor. 
" Only this I will say, that unless the goodness that 
is in the city can get control of the city govern- 
ment and put good men into office, it will no more 
avail to its salvation, than Lot's righteousness did 
to Old Sodom's. The good people will be got out 



AT GREYS TONES. 175 

of it in some way — led out by their good angels, 
like our agreeable neighbors, the Pelhams, who 
have just come up here to our great delight, or 
driven out by the violence of the wicked, and the 
city will inevitably go down to chaos, destruction, 
and the devil/' 



176 DOCTOE OLDHAM 



CHAPTER XVII., 

A SHORT CHAPTER ON JUDGE-MAKING NOT AMUSING; AND NOT SO 

LIKELY TO BE INTERESTING TO THOSE WHO NEED, AS TO THOSE WHO 
DO NOT NEED, THE INSTRUCTION IT 'CONTAINS. 

" You are in favor, then, of our present way of 
making judges by universal-suffrage ballot-lpox elec- 
tions ? " asked the Doctor. 

The subject came up between him and Pro- 
fessor Clare, a few days after the talk recorded in 
the last chapter. 

The Professor said he was. 

" You go also for a limited term of office — for 
frequent elections at short intervals, instead of the 
old tenure ? " 

The Professor approved of that too. It was — 
he thought — in accordance with the genius of our 
institutions. That is a phrase he is greatly pleased 
with, and one he often uses. If any thing falls — 
or seems to him to fall — within its application, that 



AT GREYSTONES. 177 

of itself is enough to commend it to his judgment 
and approval. 

" Genius of our institutions ! " replied the Doc- 
tor ; " will that make a foolish thing a wise one, or 
console us for its working badly ? Don't you see 
it is against all human nature that such a tenure 
of judicial office should work well ? " 

The Professor confessed he did not see it. 

" Well/' continued the Doctor, " there was a 
time in England when all the judges were not only 
appointed by the crown, but held their office at the 
mere good pleasure of the king, who could at any 
moment remove them by his absolute will. But in 
the time of William the Third it became an es- 
tablished part of the British Constitution, that 
they should hold office during good behavior — 
though in practice their commissions were consid- 
ered as vacated upon a demise of the crown as late 
as the reign of George the Third, when, at the ear- 
nest recommendation of that sovereign, this cause 
of vacancy was done away with, and the tenure of 
judicial office was made perfect during good be- 
havior, with an ample and dignified official salary 
absolutely secured. You think this an improve- 
ment on the old way, don't you ? " 

" yes, it was a great triumph for British lib- 



178 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

erties, a noble security for the rights of the peo- 
ple." 

"How so?" 

" Because it made the judges independent of 
the crown," replied the Professor. 

" But wherein lies the worth and importance 
of that independence 1 " asked the Doctor. 

" Why/' said the Professor, " it freed the judges 
from temptations to pervert the course of justice, 
in order to suit the royal pleasure, and afforded the 
best guaranties for the upright and impartial ad- 
ministration of the laws." 

" True," replied the Doctor, " and yet you don't 
see that the same principles in human nature re- 
quire that the judges should be equally independ- 
ent of the popular as of the royal will ? " 

The Professor looked puzzled, as if taken a lit- 
tle aback. 

" Are judges," added the Doctor, " any more 
likely to be upright and impartial when they de- 
pend for continuance in office upon the will of the 
people, than when they depend upon the good 
pleasure of a king ? " 

The Professor's face cleared up. He was sure 
— he said — they were. 

" Well," replied the Doctor, " that is a mere 



AT GREYSTONES. 179 

question of comparison and degree not worth de- 
ciding : for even if it be as you say — though I 
don't believe it — would that at all impair the truth 
of the general principle which makes the independ- 
ence of the judiciary of the highest importance to 
the impartial administration of the laws ? The 
true question is : whether it is not best for the pu- 
rity and integrity of the judges that they should be 
freed from all dependence upon the mere arbitrary 
pleasure of any body, whether of a single or a mul- 
titudinous sovereign, and so freed from all tempta- 
tions and respects of fear or favor ? " 

The Professor made no reply. 

" My dear sir," continued the Doctor, " don't 
talk any more about the genius of our institutions, 
as if that was necessarily conclusive of any thing. 
What is the use of being duped by phrases ? 
There is a great deal of human nature in man. 
What matters a fine theory if it is not adapted to 
human nature under its actual conditions ? 

" Besides, the way of making judges you ap- 
prove of is not — rightly considered — fine in theory : 
it violates a great principle lying at the bottom of 
the matter — a principle the bulk of the people have 
no perception of, and which you and thousands of 
others like you, who ought to be more clear-headed, 
do not seem to see." 



180 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

" "What is that ? M 

" Why, that the sovereign should never sit on 
the bench itself. It is essentially tyrannical, in- 
compatible with any proper security for righteous 
judgment. I suppose you "see that it must be so 
in an absolute monarchy, where the sovereign power 
is vested in a single person ? " 

" Yes/' the Professor said, " that is very clear. w 

" It has always been so held/' said the Doctor, 
" by the wise in all modern times, even under the 
most absolute governments of Europe ; and neither 
Louis the Fourteenth, nor Frederick the Great, ever 
dared face their people with a denial of the princi- 
ple, however they may in any case have overborne 
it in practice. 

" Yet you are in favor of a way of making 
judges which virtually puts not even the sovereign 
— bad in principle as that is — but a majority on the 
bench. But there is always tyranny, always dan- 
ger to justice, where the holder of the supreme 
p 0wer — foe it Louis the Fourteenth or the majority 
— either sits in judgment or controls or influences 
it in the courts. 

" I do not approve of the judges being elected 
by the people : but I do not think the mode of 
their appointment matters so much, provided they 



AT GREY ST ONES. 181 

hold during good behavior. But to make their con- 
tinuance in office dependent at short intervals upon 
a popular vote, is bad in principle, and so it cannot 
but work badly — especially in our great cities, like 
the one down below. 

" Think of it : judges elected every little while 
—on the same ticket perhaps with political officers 
— at any rate the nominations always controlled by 
party managers — the balance of power in the hands 
of that sort of human nature which is always to be 
found in such large proportions in great cities, and 
which is always likely to be most prominent and 
powerful in politics and elections, at primary meet- 
ings and at the polls ; — gracious heavens ! What 
must not the administration of justice in time come 
to ? What has it not come to now ? Where is 
that certainty of punishment following crime which 
the wisdom of criminal jurisprudence and the good 
of society demands ? There is almost nothing of 
it left. It is scarcely possible to bring a criminal 
who has money or political influence within the 
compass of the penalties of the law. 

" I do not say that all the evils in the working of 
our judicial system come merely from the bad ten- 
ure of office of the judges. Some of them come 
from, and all of them are aggravated by, the un- 



182 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

wise multiplication of judges and courts. Hence 
you see court interfering with court, and judge with 
judge — a perfect war of writs and counter-writs ; 
and what with the practical working of the law 
on jury-forming and on admissible evidence, the 
administration of justice is well-nigh reduced to a 
game of legal thimble-rigging between sharp law- 
yers. It is almost a bounty on crime, a proclama- 
tion of immunity to the criminal. 

" No, sir, our way of making judges does not 
work well ; it will go on to work worse and worse ; 
and justice will never have free course until the 
people become wise enough to put good and fit men 
upon the bench without regard to party politics, 
and to make them independent of the popular favor 
for their continuance there. 

" Of which there is small hope." 



AT GREYSTONES. 183 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

SOMETHING ON UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE AND SACRED RIGHTS — WHEREIN 
• IS SEEN BOW PROFESSOR CLARE AND PELHAM BRIEF DIFFER FROM 
EACH OTHER, AND THE DOCTOR FROM THEM BOTH. 

" How many persons among us/' said the Doc- 
tor, after a pause, " talk as if all rights were sa- 
cred — almost the only sacred things in the universe, 
and political rights the most sacred, and the exer- 
cise of them the chief end of man. 

" There's my friend Pelham Brief — I tried the 
other day to make him comprehend the difference 
between a right resting merely in prescription, and 
a right grounded in natural justice/' 

" Yet Brief is a man of genius," said Professor 
Clare. 

" Yes," replied the Doctor, " Brief is a man of 
genius — in his way. He has a truly creative imag- 
ination ; and he has withal a fancy so rich and 
bright, a taste so pure and delicate, and so exquisite 



184 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

a faculty of expression, that I reckon him one of 
our most charming writers. But there are a good 
many sorts of genius. Plato was a man of ge- 
nius. Brief has not the same sort of genius Plato 
had, any more than he probably has the genius of 
Cassar, or Kichelieu ; or George Stephenson. He is 
a man of genius in the poetic sphere, in the world of 
fine letters ; but not in the world of thought. He 
has no eminent faculty for science, analysis, logical 
connection, theoretic insight, or higher speculation. 
He doesn't seize at a glance the principles that un- 
derlie and connect political doctrines, and deter- 
mine the truth or falsehood of theories on human 
rights. He cannot see but the right of suffrage — 
because it is called a right— must of necessity be a 
sacred right, belonging therefore to every human 
being, as much as the right of life and liberty, and 
consequently to deprive any person of it, unless it 
be forfeited by crime, is a moral wrong, or, as the 
political orators say, an atrocious violation of the 
sacred principles of eternal justice." 

" But I agree with Brief," said Professor Clare. 
" I go for universal suffrage." 

" What do you mean by universal ? " 

" Why, all the people voting, of course." 

" Negroes ? " 



AT GREYSTONES. 185 

" Hem — no, I did not mean them." 

" Women ? " 

" No— I don't go for that." 

" Ah ; by universal then you mean all the white 
men ! A droll idea of universal ! And a still 
droller idea of a sacred right — one which the larg- 
est number of full-grown persons in the State may 
be — and probably are — excluded from ! But why 
should not negroes and women vote ? " 

" Oh, it would not do," the Professor said. 

" But they are human persons/' insisted the 
Doctor, " and as virtuous and intelligent, and as 
capable of voting uprightly and wisely, as the great 
mass of the voters in general, and of our Irish and 
German citizens in particular." 

" But it would not work well," replied the Pro- 
fessor. 

" But who is to decide that question ? " said 
the Doctor. 

" The majority of the people, of course," was 
the Professor's answer. 

" The majority of male white people, you 
mean ? " 

" Yes." 

" But don't you see," said the Doctor, " if you 
allow the majority may justly make one restriction 



186 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

to-day, they may make another to-morrow — may 
exclude, for instance, all but native-born citizens, 
or all who are not freeholders, or all such gray- 
haired old fellows as I am ; — in short, don't you 
see your boasted right of universal suffrage resolves 
itself at last into the right of a majority — it may 
be a majority of one — to deprive everybody else of 
a right you set out with assuming to be sacred, and 
claiming should on that account be universal ? 

" Besides : consider how droll it is to call that 
a sacred right which you yet make depend for its 
rightful existence on the opinion of a majority as 
to the expediency of allowing it. Is that the ten- 
ure by which you and I hold our right to live and 
to dispose of ourselves ? Should we not say to any 
majority that proposed to grant us the right to life 
and to self-ownership : Thank you for nothing ; — 
our right to these things is anterior to your grant 
and independent of it — something you can indeed 
recognize, something you are bound to protect, and 
which, within the limits of justice and for good 
ends, you may regulate the exercise of, but which 
you cannot give, nor (unless forfeited by crime) 
take away, except by unjust force ? Does it not 
seem to you to be thus in respect to life and liber- 
ty ? " 



AT GREYS TONES. 187 

The Professor said surely it did seem to him to 
be so, and impossible it should be otherwise. 

" You cannot, then/' continued the Doctor, 
" conceive that any notion of convenience or ad- 
vantage to the State, nor even any persuasion of 
State necessity — however honest and strong — would 
make it right for the majority to put you and me 
to death, or shut us up in prison, without any fault 
or crime on our part ? " 

" No, certainly, I cannot." 

" Well, if it holds thus in regard to life and 
liberty, must it not hold thus in regard to the right 
of suffrage also, if it be equally a sacred right ? 
Must it not be equally independent of the grant of 
a majority ? Must it not be a right that no inno- 
cent person, capable of exercising it, can be right- 
fully deprived of at the mere will of any majority, 
however large ? Must it not be one which, though 
it may be forced to succumb to the immoral law of 
the strongest, yet will — even while the foot of vio- 
lence is crushing it — proclaim itself inviolable ? " 

" My dear sir," continued the Doctor, " it will 
not do for you to talk of universal suffrage, when 
you mean only male whites, — nor to talk of it as a 
sacred right, while you go for excluding all but 
them. 



188 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

" But Brief is in a different position from you 
— and in degree much, more consistent. He insists 
that all men — colored as well as white, and all wo- 
men, too — white, black, and of every other hue — 
shall have the right to vote." 

" But Brief is an Abolitionist and Woman's 
Eights man," said the Professor. 

" Ah, and you are only a Democrat ! " replied 
the Doctor. " But Brief says it is absurd for you 
to talk about democracy and equal rights, and that 
your pretence of being in favor of universal suffrage 
is a disreputable sham. He denies that sex or color 
are a righteous ground for depriving persons of their 
rights as human beings. And I perfectly agree 
with him." 

" But surely," said the Professor, " you are not 
in favor of negroes and women being allowed to 
vote ? " 

"No," replied the Doctor, "not at all. But I 
agree with Brief, that negroes and women should 
not, because of their color or sex, be deprived of 
any of their rights as human beings, which they 
are competent to exercise ; and I don't think their 
color or sex produces or betokens any such incapa- 
city as ought — out of regard to their welfare or the 
public good — to exclude them. 



AT GREYSTONES. 189 

" But then I differ from Brief about trie nature 
of the right of suffrage. I hold it to be not a 
natural, but a civil right ; not sacred, but merely 
prescriptive — one that rests in a grant from society, 
from the State — one that the people, the majority, 
may rightfully confer or withhold, extend, limit, 
and regulate at their pleasure. — not indeed in a 
merely capricious, unreasonable way, but as they 
shall truly judge best adapted to promote the great 
ends for which the State exists, for which govern- 
ments exist — the maintenance of social justice and 
human welfare. 

" The whole question of suffrage, therefore — its 
right and extent — is a question of .expediency, 
what, namely, is best for the commonwealth. And 
I don't believe universal suffrage is best — neither 
in Briefs large sense of the word, nor in your, nar- 
rower and improper use of it. I am sure the good 
of society requires all women should be excluded 
from voting ; and as to men — though I would not 
exclude any one merely on account of his color, yet 
I would, as far as possible, make the qualifications 
of voters such as to include only those it would be 
best, for the good of the whole, to intrust with 
such a right — a right which (though not sacred in 
itself,) yet where granted involves duties that are 



190 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

sacred, and upon the wise and virtuous discharge 
of which the welfare of the nation depends/' 

" But how did you manage with Brief ? " in- 
quired the Professor. 

U I asked him if he went for children having 
the right of suffrage, as well as as all grown-up 
persons of both sexes. 

" He said no, he did not contend for that. 

" I told him I wondered he did not. You go, 
said I, upon the principle that the State cannot, 
for any ends of its own, justly deprive any person 
of a right belonging to human persons as such ? 

" He said yes, he did. 

" i There is my daughter, Lilly, for instance/ I 
continued ; c she has done nothing against the laws ; 
you would say the State has no more just right to 
put her to death or to make her work in a tread-mill 
— for any advantage to itself — than to do the same to 
me, or any other full-grown person innocent of crime V 

" ■ True/ replied Brief, c but the State gives you 
a right to control your daughter, and you, I pre- 
sume, have no doubt but you may rightfully re- 
strain her freedom/ 

" ' Unquestionably/ I said, ' I have a certain 
right over her, not to be capriciously exercised, nor 
for my own own ends merely, but reasonably, within 



AT GREYSTONES. 191 

certain limits, in order that I may discharge my 
duty as a parent, and for the child's own good ; on 
the ground that her personality is imperfect, not 
yet so completely unfolded as that she can be safely 
left entirely to her own guidance. This right the 
State does not give me, but recognizes, and to a 
certain extent sustains ; and on the same ground 
the State assumes the right, because it is its duty, 
to control, directly or indirectly, all imperfect per- 
sons of mature age, the imbecile or insane. 

i c c But your suggestion has no force to establish 
your consistency, or to stop my argument. Dis- 
tinguemus distinguenda — let us make all just dis- 
tinctions. To regulate the exercise of a sacred 
right is a very different thing from prohibiting it 
altogether ; to restrain or limit it, for the good of 
those who are not mature persons enough to be ca- 
pable of exercising it safely for themselves or fur 
others, is one thing ; to take it entirely away, for 
mere State ends, from those who are capable of ex- 
ercising it, is another and quite different thing. I 
may admit the justice of the one, without admit- 
ting the justice of the other/ 

" e But in excluding children from voting/ said 
Brief, i we go upon the ground that they are not ca- 
pable, like full-grown persons, of exercising the 
right.' 



192 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

" c Then I deny the matter of fact alleged/ said 
I. c There is my boy Phil, twenty years old, he is 
just as competent as nine-tenths of the legal voters 
in the land ; and there are thousands of the same 
age equally competent/ 

" Brief admitted it was so, and thought it 
would be a just and good thing if twenty, or even 
eighteen, were made the legal age for voting. 

" ' But how are you going to stop there ? ' said 
I. : There is Lilly, she is only fourteen ; and there 
is Fred, he is twelve ; yet you know, and I know, 
and everybody that knows them knows, that they 
are just as able to drop a ballot into the box as I 
am ; as likely to do it out of an honest love for the 
commonwealth as most persons ; and far more ca- 
pable of doing it with a wise and intelligent judg- 
ment than multitudes who cast their votes ; and 
there are tens of thousands of children equally as 
competent as they are/ 

" c But/ said Brief, £ not all children are compe- 
tent ; so we have to draw a line and assume the 
fitness of those on one side, and the unfitness of 
those on the other/ 

" c And assume what is not true/ said I. ' Is it 
not an established principle of justice, that the 
State shall not interfere with the sacred rights of 



AT GEEYSTONES. 193 

persons except for good cause, established in each 
individual case ? ' 

" £ But we must have some practical rule in re- 
gard to suffrage/ said Brief. 

" ' And you can have no general rule/ said I, 
1 that will not either include some that are incom- 
petent, and therefore, on your ground, have not the 
right, or exclude some that are competent, and 
therefore have the right to vote. 

" ' Don't you see, therefore, that you cannot get 
along on your ground ? The only consistent con- 
clusion is that suffrage is not a sacred right, but 
one that the State may, for its own ends, that is, 
for the good of the commonwealth, grant or deny, 
extend or limit, as it may judge best. It may, 
without injustice, establish a practical rule, al- 
though it should include some that are incompetent 
to vote, and exclude some that are competent. 
State machinery, like all other, is liable to fall short 
of theoretical perfection in its practical working. 
The ideally perfect can never be actually reached. 
All the State has to do is to do as well as it can. 
If it is practically best for the commonwealth to 
exclude from the exercise of suffrage, women and 
children, and negroes and foreigners, and one-half 
of the grown-up native-born white men, too, then 



194 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

it is right to do it, and the State, the people, if 
wise, should and will do it. And this is all there 
is to be said on the question of right in the mat- 
ter/ n 



AT GREYST0NE3. 195 



CHAPTER XIX. 

HARD AND DRY, PERHAPS BUT GOING TO THE BOTTOM OP A SUBJECT 

IMMENSELY IMPORTANT TO BE UNDERSTOOD IN THIS COUNTRY. 

" Government, my ctear sir/' said the Doctor, " is 
altogether a practical affair. That is best which 
works best, not that which you may think theoreti- 
cally the best. But you have a vague notion that 
a democratic government is something intrinsically 
more just, and has a better moral right to exist, 
than a monarchical or aristocratic one. This is a 
groundless notion/' 

" Bat the people have the right of determining 
their form of government," said Professor Clare. 

" True/' replied the Doctor, ' ( God has not pre- 
scribed any particular form, and we therefore infer 
that He has left the determination of it to society ; 
and we infer, too, with equal right, that He does 
not care what the form is, provided it secure the 
ends for which the State exists, social justice and 



196 DOCTOK OLDHAM 

the public welfare. So far as the mere form is 
concerned, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, have 
each an equal Divine sanction and right to exist ; 
and the people may establish either of them, or any 
mixture or modification of them." 

" The sovereignty, then, resides in the peo- 
ple," said the Professor. 

" Yes," answered the Doctor, " necessarily, in- 
herently, indefeasibly, and inalienably. Bat this 
sovereignty is not absolute and unbounded. It is 
limited by the very nature of the objects for which 
the State exists— the maintenance of the relations 
of right — the rights of every man as towards his 
fellows, and of his fellows as towards him : rights, 
I say, by which I mean whatever may be justly de- 
manded by every man, and from every man in so- 
ciety — whatever is essential to his being and well- 
being as a man which he cannot, or ought not, or 
will not obtain singly, but only in, with, and through 
society. Wherever there are rights there is, or 
there should be, the power to enforce them. This 
is sovereignty — the sovereignty that resides in the 
people as a State — a sovereignty for right, but not 
for wrong. It is a sovereignty limited by duty, 
the duty of organizing and exercising the powers 
of the State to secure the best good of the people, 



AT GKEYSTONES. 197 

so far as that lies within the sphere of the State. 
Any government that does this in any reasonably 
proximate way, is legitimate, no matter what its 
form, nor how it got established. I say, any gov- 
ernment that does this in a reasonably proximate 
way ; for you can no more expect to realize ideal 
perfection in government, than to realize the ideal 
figures of mathematics." 

" But our immortal Declaration of Independ- 
ence, lays it down that human governments derive 
their just powers from the consent of the governed," 
said the Professor. 

" And like all such general positions," rejoined 
the Doctor, " it must be reasonably and not fool- 
ishly interpreted, otherwise the consequences be- 
come theoretically and practically troublesome. 

' c In the first place, as a doctrine on the origin 
and rightful ground of government, let us take care 
how we interpret it. 

" The State, and there can be no State without 
a government of some sort, is as little the product 
of deliberate choice, as the result of chance or 
accidental discovery. It is no contrivance, no mu- 
tual insurance company or joint-stock association, 
nor any contract of parties creating what did not 
exist before. Men do not form a State and then 



198 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

go into it. They are born into it. It is something 
that exists wherever society exists — something that 
has always existed — something necessary and per- 
petual. Even Louis the Fourteenth, who said, ■ I 
am the State/ said on his death-bed, c I depart, 
but the State will endure forever/ It is something 
that gets itself formed, because there is a necessity 
for it, growing out of the necessity for men to live 
together in society. 

" So originally with government, which is the 
organization and exercise of the powers of the 
State. Nothing can be more false and absurd than 
the theory which makes a c social contract ' the ori- 
gin and rightful ground of government. Govern- 
ments, in a right theoretical view, are not made, 
formed, constructed, put together, after a mere out- 
ward or mechanical fashion. • They spring, grow, 
take form, get made of themselves, in a natural 
and living way. Spontaneous growth, from an in- 
ward principle, is the law of all organic life. 

" Society, in its sovereign capacity, may indeed 
deliberately alter an existing or create a new form 
of government ; but the State, with some form of 
government, must have pre-existed, to render this 
possible. In point of fact, governments are seldom 
the result of deliberate adoption. They are mostly 



AT GREYS TONES. 199 

the product of spontaneous growth, or of the ne- 
cessity of circumstances, and none the worse, in the 
latter case, if the necessity be an internal one. 
Foreign force and imposition apart, the fact that a 
government exists and maintains itself in the exer- 
cise of the supreme powers of the State, is, gener- 
ally speaking, the sufficient consent of the gov- 
erned — by governed meaning the nation in its sov- 
ereign capacity. No formal consent is necessary. 
The consent is something that may be rightfully 
assumed. 

" But, perhaps, in the next place, by the con- 
sent of the governed, you do not mean the formal , 
nor even the implicit and assumed consent of the 
nation, but the consent, express or tacit, of the in- 
dividuals that compose it ? I should not wonder 
if this were your notion.' ' 

" It is something like it, I confess/' said the 
Professor. 

" But thus understood/' said the Doctor, " your 
immortal Declaration would express something as 
absurdly false as can well be conceived. 

" For does the sovereignty of the people reside 
in the individuals that compose the nation — dis- 
tinctly, separately and independently in each ? If 
so, then either it is complete and entire in each ; 



200 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

each individual is the sovereign, or one of the sov- 
ereigns, according to a phrase we often hear, so that 
the sovereignty of the State is merely a collective 
word to express the total number or aggregation of 
these distinct, separate and independent sovereign- 
ties. 

" Or else it is fractionally in each ; each pos- 
sesses distinctly, separately and independently, a 
fractional part — so that the one whole and complete 
sovereignty of the people is composed or constituted 
by the addition of these distinct, separate and in- 
dependent fractions of sovereignty. 

" But neither view can hold. Falsehood and 
absurdity either way. 

" You might as truly and wisely say that your 
hands or feet, your ringers or toes, every several 
muscle and nerve of your body, possesses each a 
distinct, separate and independent life and living 
power of action and motion ; or that a fractional 
part of the life and power of the body resides dis- 
tinctly, separately and independently in each sev- 
eral member and organ. 

"The sovereignty of the people, complete, en- 
tire and undivided, resides in the people, as one 
whole body, and not at all in the individual. Sover- 
eignty is not an attribute of individuals. It is im- 



AT GEEYSTONES. 201 

possible it should be. The sovereignty of the State 
is that which, within its sphere, has at once the 
supreme right and power in and of itself, to govern, 
to make its will valid and irresistibly effectual. 
This no individual can possess. No despot that 
ever lived, not the most absolute wielder of the su- 
preme powers of the State, ever did possess it. 
Louis the Fourteenth, who called himself the State, 
was never the sovereign of France in the high sense 
of the word, because he never was the State, nor 
could be. He never possessed the sovereignty of 
France — never possessed nor exercised in his sole 
person, the right and power, in and of himself, to 
make his own will irresistibly valid. His power, 
great as it was, stood in the consent of the people, 
not indeed formally and individually expressed, but 
in their consent, or it could not have stood at all ; 
but he was more or less checked in the absolute 
despotic exercise of it in many ways — by public 
opinion, by old maxims, laws and institutions of the 
State. 

"The sovereignty, then, is neither inherent in 
the members of a State, as individuals — nor does 
the possession of political rights and the exercise 
of political power by individuals — all, many, or one, 

makes no difference — vest the sovereignty in the 
9* 



202 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

individual, making him wholly or fractionally a sov- 
ereign. 

1 c The notion, therefore, of the necessity of the 
' consent of the governed/ in their individual capa- 
city, going upon the idea that the sovereignty of 
the State, or any share of it, is possessed by the 
members of the State, as individuals — and the no- 
tion can go upon no other idea — is one that cannot 
stand. It is as groundless as the idea it goes upon. 

" Besides : your immortal Declaration is uni- 
versal in its terms. It should be so, on the princi- 
ple you adopt ; for if it hold at all, it must hold 
of all. Let us see where we get. There are, for 
instance, a great many malcontents among us, who 
do not consent to our Constitution, but would rather 
overthrow it ; some in the name of liberty and the 
sacred rights of man, some in the name of slavery 
and the sacred right of property in man. Are such 
persons, therefore, absolved from allegiance to it, 
or has our government no just power over them ? " 

" But the consent of the majority, I suppose, 
is meant," said the Professor. 

" Well," rejoined the Doctor, " that is giving 
up the proposition in its terms, as implying the in- 
dividual consent of all the governed. So far so 
good. But to say that human governments derive 



AT GREYSTONES. 203 

tlieir just powers from the consent of the majority 
of the governed, whether of all the individuals in 
the State, or of a part of them, (those, namely, who 
are voters,) is equally a false interpretation of your 
immortal Declaration. The just powers of a gov- 
ernment stand only in the consent of the "body in 
which the sovereignty inherently resides. There is 
no inherent sovereignty in a majority any more 
than in a minority, either as individuals or as a 
body. The sovereignty, as I have said, is in the 
people of the State, as one whole body. It is 
a sovereignty of which the people cannot divest 
themselves. They may indeed delegate the prac- 
tical exercise of the powers of the State, at their 
pleasure and during their pleasure, to one, to 
many, or to all, of the members of the State — 
may delegate, that is, all they can delegate, with 
or without conditions and limitations, as they may 
choose. In a democratic, or in a mixed republican 
State, where popular suffrage prevails, the sovereign 
consent of the people may find expression, their 
sovereign will may get practical validity, through 
the action of all the voters and the concurrence of 
a majority of them ; only you must remember that 
the action of the majority is taken as decisive of 
any question submitted to suffrage, not because of 



204 DOCTOK OLDHAM 

any inherent exclusive right in the majority to be 
the decisive organ of the sovereign, any more than 
to be the sovereign itself, but simply from the ne- 
cessity of having a decision, and because it is as- 
sumed to be, on the whole, the wisest and most ex- 
pedient way of getting it, though it may happen 
in many cases that the actual decision is very far 
from being the wisest and best. 

" You must distinguish then between the sover- 
eign and its representative — between the power 
that delegates and the authority that is delegated. 
In governments where the constitution and the ad- 
ministration of the powers of the State depend 
primarily upon the action of a majority, both its 
action and that of all the public functionaries 
created by it, is taken and held to be not their ac- 
tion, but that of the sovereign State. It runs in 
the name of the people, and is so recited in all offi- 
cial forms. It is, for instance, l The People of the 
State of New York/ that is said to enact, judge, 
and execute, through them. Their authority is not 
imperial, but only ministerial. The only imperial 
power is that of the People of the State. 

" You must remember, too, that the majority, 
acting as the representative of the sovereign State, 
cannot rightfully exercise its delegated authority in 



AT GREYSTONES. 205 

any arbitrary or absolute way. The sovereign State 
itself has imperial power only within its sphere and 
for its just ends. It cannot delegate what it does 
not possess. The State is a moral person ; it has 
of right no sovereign power to do wrong, and it 
can confer no such power. It has no just right to 
have its own will and way at all events and in any 
way ; and it can invest no majority acting in its 
name and behalf with any such right. The right- 
ful powers of a majority are restrained by all the 
limitations by which the sovereignty of the people 
is restrained. The stream cannot rise higher than 
the source from which it springs. 

" And here we touch upon the great danger in 
all governments — the danger of absolutism. All 
power is liable to abuse. Absolute power is safe 
only in the hands of God. It is always dangerous 
in human hands, whether lodged in one, in a few, 
or in the majority. Yet public power inevitably 
tends to absolutism. But democratic absolutism is 
as dangerous as monarchical — more so in some re- 
spects ; and it is less easily got rid of, when it be- 
comes intolerable. It is possible to cut off the 
head of a single tyrant, but who is to cut off the 
million heads of a tyrannical majority ? 

* ( Democratic power has its flatterers, equally 



206 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

with monarchical. Demagogues are the courtiers 
of the majority. The sense of moral responsibility 
is comparatively little felt by men acting in a mass 
— especially if irritated by opposition, as they arc 
prone to be, or excited by passion, as they are very 
liable to be. The absolute will of a single despot 
is restrained by many necessities and limitations, 
moral and circumstantial. His power cannot stand 
solely in himself ; it must support itself on some- 
thing without, on opinion. He is compelled to con- 
sider whether he can effect what he wishes. Louis 
Napoleon's imperial throne could not stand for a 
day, if it had nothing to rest upon but his hundred 
and seventy-five thousand bayonets. But what is 
there to restrain a majority bent on having its own 
way ? It makes its own opinion, and there is no 
outside power able to resist its will. 

" Many persons talk as if there was no other ab- 
solutism than monarchical. This is a mistake. 
The Athenian government became a democratic ab- 
solutism. So did the French at one time. So may 
any other. And there are no atrocities of tyranny 
perpetrated by single despots, but democratic des- 
potism has equalled or surpassed them. Pharaoh 
put the male infants of the Hebrews to death, to 
prevent the increase of that people ; the Spartans 



AT GREYSTONES. 207 

were wont to kill the Helots, ' as many ' (the histo- 
rian says) ' as was necessary/ whenever they found 
their numbers inconveniently large. The massacre 
of »St. Bartholomew's finds its prototype in the 
murder of the minority by the Corcyrean majority. 
Some old tyrant (I forget his name) put a man to 
death who dreamed he had slain the tyrant, and 
was foolish enough to tell his dream. But the 
French tribunals at one time beat that ; they cut 
off old women's heads, for c suspicion of incivisme,' 
suspicion of not being inwardly pleased with the 
bloody doings of the majority ! I doubt if the 
records of monarchical despotism can show any 
thing equal to that. 

u Do not infer from this that I am in favor of 
monarchical absolutism. I would have none of any 
sort. I mean only to enforce the necessity of guard- 
ing against the dangerous tendency to democratic 
absolutism. Let the majority get a habit of feeling 
that they are the people — that they have the right 
to do whatever they like, and to treat the minority 
as if not belonging to the people — that he who op- 
poses a monarchical absolutism is a hero, and, if he 
falls, a martyr in a sacred cause, but he who op- 
poses the absolutism of a majority, is a criminal, 
who may rightfully be crushed by the sovereign 



208 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

power he opposes ; let such sentiments come to 
prevail, and what will there be but the worst of all 
tyrannies, the tyranny of an irresponsible, irresisti- 
ble majority ? What force, then, in laws and con- 
stitutions ? 

" I do not say we have come to this, or are 
coming. But is there not reason enough, in human 
nature, in the quality of pQwer to delight in itself ; 
to grow and strengthen itself; to impose upon 
its own conscience, with a notion of its inherent 
right ; to be irritated at opposition, and so become 
self-willed and unjust ; in all this, and in the per- 
nicious influence of demagogue courtiers, their arts 
and flatteries, is there not reason enough for appre- 
hension of what may come in the future ? Are 
there no tokens of the existence of such false and 
dangerous sentiments ? Are there no symptoms 
of their increase and spread ? 

" The more popular rights, the more duties, and 
the more need of wisdom and goodness in the peo- 
ple." 



AT GRETSTONES. 209 



CHAPTER XX. 

YERY SHORT, PERHAPS UNPALATABLE — YET, IP TRUE, OUGHT NOT TO 
GIYE OFFENCE TO ANY GOOD MAN. 

"But, perhaps, husband, you have not the 
faith you should have in the virtue of the people," 
said Mrs. Oldham. She had been listening in si- 
lence until now. 

" I have all proper respect for the virtue of the 
people," replied the Doctor. " I believe the great 
mass of them have virtue enough to follow their 
private callings, for the most part, with tolerable 
honesty — many of them with exemplary upright- 
ness. The great mass of the people, especially c off 
the pavements/ as an eminent statesman and friend 
of mine says, have political virtue enough to wish 
the country to be rightly and uprightly governed. 
But their virtue doesn't prevent their being tools 
in the hands of political managers." 

"But who are they?" 



210 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

" Very different men, my dear, from those of 
the earlier and better times. Sixty years ago men 
like John Jay — a name synonymous with every 
thing great and good — statesmanly wisdom, pure 
patriotism, unsullied honor, incorruptible integrity, 
had an influence in public affairs, and on the poli- 
tics of the State, which such men do not have 
now." 

" But of what sort are the managers nowa- 
days ? " 

" Professor Clare knows^ my dear. Are they 
such men as John Jay, Professor ? " 

" No, I must confess they are not," said he. 

" But what is their character ? " persisted Mrs. 
Oldham. 

" You have no personal acquaintance with such 
men ; I trust you will never have ; and it is hard 
to make you comprehend precisely the species. 
But in general you may understand that they are 
men of small private and less public virtue. If 
we look to the case of your native city below, I 
should say the individual managers are for the most 
part men your father would not have liked to shake 
hands or walk the streets with. There was a 
time, in his day, when a De Witt Clinton could be 
be mayor for twelve years, and Kichard Varick for 
I don't know how many." 



AT GREYSTONES. 213 

" But could not such men have the office now- 
adays, if they would take it ? " 

" No, my dear, not a chance for it, unless in 
some extraordinary combined reaction of the proper- 
ty-holders and decent and respectable people of all 
parties, after some stupendously profligate and cor- 
rupt administration, it might be possible to put an 
able and good man in for once. But for the most 
part it is necessary to success that a man renounce 
integrity and honor ; put himself into the hands of 
party politicians ; give pledges of jobs, contracts 
and plunder to men who make corruption a trade, 
buying up at the highest price the suffrages and 
fists of the affiliated vice and ruffianism, that holds 
the balance of power. 

" No, my dear wife, New York is ruled nowa- 
days by such men as — rule it. 

" How far the same thing is true elsewhere and 
throughout the country, is more than would be 
pleasant for you to know. 

" So much for the political virtue of the people. 
Eeally I do not think there is any too much of it, 
not enough, I am afraid, for us to get on in the best 
way. But we shall get on after a fashion for some 
time, I make no doubt. But if we keep on as we 
are now going, there will come a time when we 



212 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

shall not get on at all ; things will rush down, per- 
haps, in some memorably disastrous way, and amidst 
anarchic, storms and darkness, get righted again in 
some fashion, as best it can, for another start. The 
old story over again. But I think not in our time, 
wife. Possibly we may grow better before it gets 
to that." 

" Oh, I hope we may, husband." 

" It is a Christian wish, wife, in which I heart- 
ily join." 



AT GREYSTONES. 213 



CHAPTER XXI 



ALSO SHORT — NOT WITHOUT INTEREST FOR SOME MINDS — BUT LIKELY 
TO DISPLEASE TWO SORTS OF READERS AND TO SHOCK ONE OF THEM. 



" But there is our system of public instruction," 
said the Professor ; " our common schools, primary 
and higher, with our admirable school libraries ; 
— there is something to give us hope for a better 
future." 

" All very well, and much to be rejoiced in," 
returned the Doctor, " but not enough in themselves 
to make private or public virtue sure. Knowledge 
is a power for evil as well as for good. 

" You remind me of something that happened 
a little while ago in town. I was in the book re- 
pository of one of the most eminent publishing 
houses of the country, passing down the long 
length of that vast hall, with its two rows of hand- 
some columns supporting the ceiling, and looking 
at the immense piles of books — eighty thousand 



214 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

volumes — ordered by the State of Ohio for their 
public school libraries — lying there to be made ready 
for transportation — when the head of the house, 
who was walking with me, remarked that Mr. Cob- 
den, the celebrated member of the British Parlia- 
ment, then on a visit to this country, was there a 
few days before, and, looking at the books, said to 

him : c Ah, Mr. A , there is the bulwark of 

your institutions/ 

" Ah, Mr. A /' said I, " why didn't you 

tell him the Evil One knows ten times as much as 
there is in all the books in your store, and it doesn't 
make him good at all ? " 

" But are you sure Mr. Cobden believes there 
is any Evil One ? " said Professor Clare. 

" That makes no difference to the argument/' 
replied the Doctor. 

" But you believe there is one ? " said the Pro- 
fessor. 

" Well, if there be," said the Doctor, " he is 
God's creature — for I don't believe in an infinite 
and self-existent Evil One — and so I hope God will 
be able to reclaim him to goodness, as I am sure 
His nature would lead Him to wish to do. But I 
am quite sure no amount of c useful knowledge ' 
will ever make him good." 



AT GREYSTONES. 215 

" husband, why do yon speak in such a way ? 
Mrs. Shaftonwas scandalized the other day by what 
you said." 

" What was it ? " 

" Something about the Evil One, much like 
what you have just now said." 

"What, my charitable wish for his conver- 
sion ? " 

u Yes, you quite shocked her." 

" Then she needed to be shocked. A person 
who is shocked at the mere suggestion of a benevo- 
lent wish, for the restoration to goodness and bless- 
edness, of one of the highest order of God's spir- 
itual creatures, ought to be shocked a number of 
times — if only it would do any good." 

u But she supposed you meant he would be re- 
stored." 

w That is not my fault. I didn't say any such 
thing ; and a person ought to have a double gal- 
vanic shock, for not distinguishing between the sug- 
gestion of a charitable wish and a positive belief on 
the subject — if it would quicken the faculty of dis- 
tinguishing just distinctions. Which is the most 
shocking, the most contradictory to the natural and 
necessary impulse of the best and most gracious 
feelings of the benevolent heart, to wish the evil 



216 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

and wretched may continue eternally evil and 
wretched, or to wish they may become good and 
blessed ? It seems to me the former is far the most 
shocking of the two." 

" But you don't believe he will be restored ? " 

" No, though it has been the belief of many 
great and godly men and doctors of the church, 
from the time of Origen to the present day. But 
I have no doctrine on the subject, whatever I may 
wish or hope. I don't know but he will continue 
forever evil ; and if so he must be forever wretched. 
That is a law of the spiritual universe, which the 
Almighty cannot abrogate if He would, and ought 
not if He could. 

" But this I do know : that it lies in the very 
necessity of God's essential Goodness — His Loving 
Holiness and Holy Lovingness — that He should de- 
sire and— ^as far as in Him lies — secure the good- 
ness, and thereby the blessedness, of all His spirit- 
ual creatures. He would not otherwise be God. 
He would become — I speak it in no irreverent spirit 
— the Infinite Evil One. This I know by the ne- 
cessity of the reason He has given me. 

" I know, too, as a matter of fact, that His love 
is not confined to the good. It embraces the sinful 
race of man. He has shown it in some very won- 



AT GEEYSTONES. 217 

derful methods for our restoration. And I see no 
reason in the nature of superhuman sinful spirit s, 
if such there are — the Bible says there are, and it is 
nothing strange there should be — why they should 
be excluded from the sphere of God's reclaiming 
love. He is the Father of their spirits as much as 
of ours. They are His children as much as we 
are. They must have been, like us, originally pure 
and good — for God made them, and higher and 
brighter, we are told, in order and endowment than 
our race. They fell from goodness and bliss in the 
same way as we did, in spite of the good and gra- 
cious spirit of God in them to help them keep right, 
— fell through, abuse of their freedom, that awful 
endowment, without which there could be no moral 
universe." 

" But, husband, the Bible seems to say that in 
point of fact they will continue forever evil and 
wretched/' 

" It may be so ; God cannot force them to be- 
come good any more than us ; but we must believe 
in Him as doing all He can for their restoration. 
They may be forever evil and so forever wretched, 
because they can resist all God's love and grace 
drawing them to goodness. This is the only way 
we can reconcile such a sad fate with the idea of a 
10 



218 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

r 

proper moral "universe, the only way to have a good 
God and common sense in our theology. 

" But the thought of Eternal Evil in the spir- 
itual universe of the Infinite, Holy, Loving All- 
Father, is one I do not like to entertain. The 
thought that it will be so through defect of any 
thing He can do to prevent it is monstrous. The 
thought that it will be so through any eternal pur- 
pose or agency of His is abominable. It is not the 
6 enmity of the carnal heart/ as some folks say, 
that resists it ; it is the voice of God in the uni- 
versal reason and conscience revolting against the 
atrocious doctrine. I would rather be an Atheist 
than hold it. 

" Is it not better, more congruous with every dic- 
tate of a good and benevolent heart, to hope that in 
some way, yet unknown to us, Evil will go down, 
vanquished, absorbed, extinguished and destroyed 
by the all-conquering power of Infinite Love ? 
How great its resources may be, without doing vio- 
lence to spiritual freedom, who can tell ? w 

I have already, at the outset of this work, ap- 
prised the reader that the Doctor would be likely 
to say a good many things not perfectly acceptable 
to everybody, and some perhaps offensive to many 



AT GREYSTONES. 219 

persons, including all the Pharisees, Sadducees and 
Herodians, who, as well as some of quite a different 
and better sort, are all likely to be displeased with 
this chapter. 

I do not hold myself responsible for all the Doc- 
tor's utterances. My business is to record his talk. 
At the same time I would not set down any thing 
which I did not think would, on the whole, be ap- 
proved by all courteous, candid, intelligent, dis- 
criminating, thoughtful and judicious readers, and 
such I take it are all who read, and certainly all 
who like this book. 



220 DOCTOR OLDHAM 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE DOCTOR AT A WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONTENTION — WHAT HE DID NOT 
SAT THERE, BUT WOULD HATE SAID IF HE HAD SAID ANT THING. 

Mrs. Oldham was sitting one evening listening 
in her placid way to something she did not take 
much interest in, which Professor Clare was read- 
ing to the Doctor out of a newspaper he had 
brought with him when he came in, employing her- 
self the while with one of those elegant industries 
which occupy the hands of women without absorb- 
ing their attention. 

There is a fashion, I observe, in these things ; 
and her work was of a sort I perceive to have be- 
come very fashionable of late — the netting of soft 
wools into various articles for women's heads and 
shoulders, and even into cloaks and large shawls or 
blankets — Afghans, Lilly says they call them — to 
be worn as a protection against dust in summer 
drives. Very beautiful fabrics, too, many of them 



AT GREYS TONES. 221 

are, from their rich harmony of manifold bright col- 
ors, and so fleecy and light withal, that there is 
not the least feeling of weight in wearing them. 

I have often heard it said it was a pity that 
gentlemen have not some nice occupation for their 
hands, too, during the hours they pass with the 
women in the family reunion, or in the small social 
gathering ; for that it makes the men look so lout- 
ish to be sitting idly by, or only wagging their 
tongues, while the women's nimble fingers are pro- 
ducing such pretty and useful results, all the time 
their tongues are running on in the most agreeable 
way. 

But I could never agree with this opinion. It 
seems to me this occupation of the hands at such 
times is something exclusively feminine, and mark- 
ing very fitly a distinction between men and women 
I lay the greatest stress upon the observance of. 
Of course I am not speaking in the spirit of an 
American savage, nor of the drudgeries of labor ; 
and so, Miss Amanda Kose, your sweet earnest face 
need not flush with the sacred fire of holy displeas- 
ure. I intend nothing derogatory to your lovely 
sex. On the contrary, my opinion is grounded in a 
sentiment of genuine reverence for all that is most 
truly womanly, and therefore most to be reverenced 



222 DOC TOE OLDHAM 

in woman. And I am happy to have the Doctor's 
wife on my side in this matter. For I asked her 
how she liked the notion of such parlor occupations 
for men's fingers. She said — not at all ; she would 
be ashamed to see them, it would look so unmanly ; 
she would rather see the men twiddling their fin- 
gers the whole evening without saying a word. 

" Ah, my dear/' said the Doctor, " you are not 
one of the strong-minded women. You should 
have attended the Woman's Rights Convention 
that was held here last week. You might have 
been converted by the beautiful eloquence of those 
female apostles. You might have caught the spirit 
of sublime devotion with which they declared their 
resolution never to give over demanding the sacred 
right of making men of themselves, and their readi- 
ness, if need be, ' to lay themselves ' — in their own 
exalted language — l on the altar of sacrifice ' for the 
holy cause." 

" I am glad I did not go to see women behaving 
in such an unwomanly way," said Mrs. Oldham. 
" I should have been ashamed at the sight ; and I 
certainly was ashamed of you for countenancing 
them by your presence, as you did. 

" Do you know," she continued, addressing Pro- 
fessor Clare, " that my husband was there the 



AT GREYSTONES. 223 

whole time ? He came home during their recess, 
and could talk of nothing hut the "beautiful faces 
of some of those women, and the "beautiful lan- 
guage and way of speaking of all of them. He 
went back without his dinner — we dine late, you 
know — because he would not miss the afternoon 
speeches ; and was in a hurry for his tea at night, 
that he might attend their last session. I was se- 
riously afraid he was going to catch the infection of 
their doctrines ; in fact I expected nothing but he 
would — with the zeal of a new convert — bring home 
with him the strong-minded President, and the 
chief preacher, and certainly the beautiful young 
orator, Miss Paulina Paul, who did not believe in 
St. Paul, but whose loveliness — of mind — rilled him 
— my husband, I mean, not St. Paul — with such 
rapt admiration. Think of my having to act the 
part of Martha and of Mary both to such exalted 
guests — to serve them, and at the same time to sit at 
their feet, if peradventure I might be also con- 
verted to a disciple, and perhaps to an apostle, for 
that I suppose is what my husband would have 
hoped for." 

" Ah, wife, I don't doubt you would have made 
a charming apostle of Woman's Eights — perhaps 
all the better for having such a gift for inventing 



224 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

facts, as you have just shown. But I had rather 
have you as you are. I could not get along with- 
out you at home, and it would be out of the ques- 
tion my accompanying you on your apostolic trav- 
els. All the while the chief preacher, the Kever- 
end Mrs. Black Brown, was talking, I could not 
help thinking with pity of her husband, and how 
lonely and dreary he must find his home, after be- 
ing hard at work all day among his patients, while 
she is always away on those missionary excursions, 
spreading the Gospel of Woman's Eights. I don't 
think apostles of either sex ought to be married, 
and that, I presume, is the reason why I listened 
with so much more pleasure to the lovely Paulina 
Paul, and even to the hard-faced Margaret St. An- 
thony, than to the fervent Mrs. Black Brown. I 
was not disturbed in their case by any compassion- 
ate thoughts of pining babies and forlorn husbands. 
But then Dr. Black Brown has no reason to com- 
plain ; for his wife — I ought rather to say his part- 
ner — told me she made it a condition of entering 
into the partnership, that he should stay at home 
and take care of the children, leaving her at lib- 
erty to go whenever and wherever she pleased, in 
the fulfilment of her great mission." 

" But you did attend the Convention ? " said 
the Professor. 



AT GREYSTONES. 225 

" Yes," replied tlie Doctor, " my wife is right 
as to that. In this age of great movements of so- 
cial reform, I think it quite proper for those who 
have any function of public instruction by speech 
or pen, to make themselves acquainted with the 
way in which these modern notions are held in the 
minds of the leaders. So I went to the place of 
meeting, and was standing on the steps when the 
President, Miss Margaret St. Anthony, came up ; 
and a person with whom I was talking presented 
me to her, without waiting to learn if it would be 
mutually agreeable. She said she hoped I would 
go in and take part in the discussions they were 
about to engage in. 

" I told her I could not think of debating such 
questions with the women." 

" c Ah/ said she, ' you don't think us women 
worthy of being argued with ? ' 

" ' I don't indeed think/ said I, ' that the logi- 
cal faculty is so pre-eminently the gift of wo- 
men in general, as that of quick intuitional insight, 
and the latter, it seems to me, is a finer one than 
the merely logical discursive faculty — at all events 
a different one, and the characteristic endowment 
of women/ 

" ' But how do you know/ said she, ' we 
10* 



226 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

should not evince an equal degree of logical power, 
if we had the same advantages of training as the 
men/ 

" ' Very possibly/ said I, 6 and in many in- 
stances undoubtedly in a higher degree than most 
men. But I thiak there is a sex in souls as well 
as in bodies.' 

" ' We do not deny that/ was her reply ; ' but 
should woman on that account be deprived of her 
rights ? ' 

" ' By no means/ I answered ; c most certainly 
not of any sacred rights, belonging to human per- 
sons as such, nor of your special rights as women, 
to be good daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, house- 
wives, mistresses and friends ; and as to all other 
rights, I don't know any objection to your having 
as many of them as you want, if it don't unsex you, 
and spoil you for being the particular sort of divine 
thing you were Divinely made to be. I don't know 
as you care for the right of bearing arms, running 
with the fire engines, holding the plough, going on 
whaling voyages, and such like — and if you do, I 
don't know as there is any thing to hinder your en- 
joyment of them, except your inability to discharge 
them to any good purpose. But there is one right 
in particular we men have, I hardly dare ask 
whether you desire to possess it.' 



AT GEEYSTONES. 227 

"'What is it?' 

" e The right of making fools of ourselves/ 

" e Ah, you think we women are not deprived of 
that right/ said she. 

" By this time the hour for opening the Con- 
vention had come, and she went in to preside. 

" My wife is partly right in what she says of the 
impression they produced on my mind ; for it was 
to me a very striking and curious sight to see those 
women, most of them quite young, many of them 
very pretty, and all of them very bright-minded, 
making themselves foolish, which is certainly one 
of the rights they enjoy equally with us men. And 
such beautiful writers and speakers were they, and 
mistresses (masters if they prefer) of such a clear, 
pure English style, and such true eloquence of 
speech — putting most men to shame in these re- 
spects, and with such ingenious sophistries did they 
blend the true and the false together, and beg the 
very questions to be proved — unconsciously I am 
bound to think, for they did it with such apparent 
good faith and simple earnestness of conviction — 
that I could not but think it would go hard but they 
would upset the world, were it not that the Good 
Lord had had the making of it. 

" When the talking was ail over, and the Con- 



228 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

vention dissolved, as I was passing out, the chief 
preacher asked me if I was in any degree converted 
by what I had heard. 

" ' Not the least in the world/ said I ; c all you 
and your sister apostles have so beautifully and elo- 
quently said, has made no more impression upon 
my judgment than the little hail drops on the win- 
dows ; for I see the principles you go upon are very 
false and very bad/ 

" c But why/ said she, c did you not express 
your views in the Convention ? We repeatedly in- 
vited those who did not think with us to speak 
their thoughts freely/ 

" c True/ I replied, i but you took care not to 
give them the least chance to do so. You did not 
wait so much as one-quarter of a minute in any 
instance, before some one of your own number be- 
gan talking again/ " 

" But, surely, husband, you would not have 
spoken there, even if they had given you a chance ? " 
said Mrs. Oldham. 

" Certainly not, my dear ; nothing could have 
induced me to open my mouth in such an assem- 
bly ; and even if I had been otherwise disposed to 
do so, I should have been deterred by the fear of 
exposing myself to vulgar abuse by way of answer, 



AT GREYSTONES. 229 

— I don't mean from the women in women's clothes 
that were there, certainly not from the lovely Pau- 
lina Paul, but from one or both of two speakers 
who sat on the platform in men's clothes, one of 
whom spoke very abusively of St. Paul. If a tailor 
be but the ninth part of a man, according to the 
old saying — I don't say I believe it — what fraction 
of a man must a male human being be who goes 
about to these Woman's Eights meetings, under 
the leadership of the strong-minded Margaret St. 
Anthony ? I certainly feel no contempt for the 
St. Anthony, though I don't admire her person or 
her principles ; but for such amphibious animals 
as those — neither men nor women — my feelings are 
not altogether of the most respectful sort." 

" But what would you have said, if you had 
been disposed to give them a serious homily ? " in- 
quired the Professor. 

" Well," said the Doctor, " I should have said 
something on this wise : 

" Dearly beloved sisters — I have heard many 
things here to-day that are true enough — though 
nothing new in them — and reasonable enough, and 
good enough, mixed up with a great many things 
that are not true at all, nor reasonable, nor good. 
. " You ought undoubtedly to have a chance to 



230 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

be well educated as women, equal to that which the 
men have for being educated as men. 

u I agree with you also in wishing there were a 
greater number of respectable and well-paid femi- 
nine industries, for those women who are obliged to 
earn their own livelihood. 

" There is room, too, perhaps, for some improve- 
ments in the legal relations of women — particu- 
larly to prevent drunken husbands from wasting 
property that is necessary for the support of their 
families. 

" As to all these things, you either already have 
them, or can have them, and nobody objects to your 
having them. 

" But as to the rest, the principles you go upon 
are all mere falsehood and delusion, and the notions 
you propound as to what you would do and have 
done, are all nonsense and foolishness — springing, ,1 
fear, from sheer unwomanly vanity, pride, and 
naughtiness of heart ; and if they were carried 
fully out — which I thank God is impossible in the 
very constitution of things — they would entirely 
subvert God's ordinations in the world, and work 
the greatest imaginable mischief ; spoil you for be- 
ing good women, only to make bad men of you ; 
destroy all true domestic life, and finally extinguish 
the human race. 



AT GREYSTONES. 231 

" For God has made you to be women, just as 
he has made men to he men. Both are human 
beings, and so far alike. But there are two sorts 
of human beings — human men and human women 
— different from each other with a difference run- 
ning through their whole organization, physical, 
physiological, mental and moral — a difference in 
bones, muscles, quality of predominant blood, ner- 
vous system, and temperament ; in the degree and 
quality and combination of gifts, aptitudes, bents, 
capacities, affections, and dispositions, of mind, 
heart, and soul. I speak, of course, of men and 
women according to the idea and type after which 
God made them ; I speak of them as they were 
meant to be, and for the most part are, and for the 
most part will continue to be, in spite of the mis- 
guided attempts of such exceptional women, and 
exceptional men, as some I see here to-day. 

" This difference — this constitutional and inex- 
tinguishable difference — is nothing derogatory to 
you. The question about the equality of the sexes 
is as absurd as the question whether the whiteness 
of a lily is equal to the fragrance of a rose. They 
are things not to be compared in such a way. You 
might as well think the difference of sexual organ- 
ization derogatory to you, as to think so of the 



232 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

difference in mind, heart and sonl. It implies no 
inferiority in rank, dignity, or worth. The perfec- 
tion of each is in being true to the law of their 
being — woman to the idea of womanhood, man to 
the idea of manhood. In this respect only can wo- 
man be equal to man, or man equal to woman — 
equal in dignity and worth ; and this is the only 
equality that either of us should strive after. 

" Besides, man and woman are made for each 
other. Each needs the other, and neither is per- 
fect without the other. It is only when man and 
woman are united that the perfection of either is 
realized. This is possible only through the opposite 
qualities of each. Electrical forces of the same 
sort repel each other — there is mutual attraction 
only between opposite poles. It is equally so in 
the spiritual world. Make men women or women 
men, and there can be no true union. It is only 
womanly women and manly men that can become 
truly one. 

" The characteristic qualities of woman — when 
true to the type of her being — her delicacy, mod- 
esty, reserve, and chastity in thought and feeling, 
word and action — her sweetness, gentleness, pa- 
tience, sympathy, tenderness, dependence, devo- 
tion ; her sensibility to beauty and grace, order, 



AT GREYSTONES. 233 

fitness and propriety in speech, dress, behavior, 
every thing ; her intellectual faculties — more re- 
ceptive than productive — thought resting more on 
feeling than feeling on thought — making her more 
susceptible of culture and refinement than apt for 
grasping the abstruse and rugged in science and 
practical life ; all these are her charms for man, 
through which man gets unspeakable good to his 
own nature ; while man's harder texture in body 
and mind — his strength, courage, self-reliance, his 
grasp, force, and productive power in the world of 
thought and action, draw woman to him. Thus 
each finds in the other what each one needs. The 
womanly woman feels herself strong and brave 
when she leans on man, and man's manly courage 
grows stouter, and at the same time the rugged 
hardness of his nature is softened by tender rever- 
ence, as with one arm he supports and with the 
other protects the gentle one clinging to his side. 
In every thing, in short, in which they are made 
different, it is that each may find their proper coun- 
terpart in the other. They are made different in 
order that they may become one. Out of this very 
difference springs the closest and richest union — 
the union of mutual love, whereof marriage is the 
outward representation. Only in this true married 



234 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

union, and in the home of love that builds itself up 
out of it, can the fulness and perfection of the in- 
dividual life, dignity, and worth of each be found 
and realized. 

" In this union your part and lot is fixed and 
made necessary by a wisdom greater than yours. 
God has made you to be wives and mothers, just as 
He has made men to be husbands and fathers. All 
talk about sameness of rights is absurd. You can- 
not have the rights of husbands and fathers, because 
you cannot discharge the duties of husbands and 
fathers. The husband is the head of the family, 
the wife his help-meet. This comes of itself nat- 
urally in every true union of love between a manly 
man and a womanly woman. It is the dignity and 
worth and happiness of both, notwithstanding the 
grandiloquent nonsense of your chief preacher, who 
declares ' the individual life problem of a human 
soul is not solvable, if any one lives to be the help 
of another ; ' nonsense which might be pernicious, 
but that He who said, ' it is not good for man to be 
alone, I will make him a help-meet for him/ is 
stronger in woman's nature than the nonsense that 
contradicts His wise plan. 

u Home, then, the Home of Love, is the sa- 
cred sphere of woman's noblest activities, her duties 



AT GREYSTONES 235 

and her joys. Abroad; indeed, in the social circle, 
she has her place, as a woman, to please and be 
pleased, to brighten and adorn, to do good and to get 
good. But in the sacred intimacies of home is the 
centre of her life. "While the husband watches 
over, protects, provides, engages in the outward ac- 
tivities on which the welfare of the family depends, 
the duties of his calling and those which the public 
safety and the public weal impose, the loving wife and 
mother presides within, with gracious and graceful 
assiduities, caring for the comfort, health and welfare 
of all, nurturing the children in goodness, affection, 
reverence, duty, truth, honor, love of count ry and of 
God. She is the good genius of the house, through 
whose benignant skill all things get well ordered, 
take a bright and cheerful look, and the air of the 
home becomes full of peace and the perfume of 
flowers. She has a fairy art, born only of love, that 
throws a nameless charm over the homeliest things 
in the loving eyes that see, and the loving hearts 
that feel her to be the centre of the household life, 
its grace and graciousness — instinctively see and 
feel it, even though the faculty to analyze and re- 
flect upon it be not unfolded. c Her children rise up 
and call her blessed, and her husband he praiseth 
her.' Thus in loving and being loved, she finds the 
fulness of her life. 



236 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

" This is home as I find it ; for there is a true 
woman and a loving wife and mother in my home. 

" Such is woman's noble and blessed destination 
to bring man and herself back to Eden again. 

" But you would spoil it all with your foolish 
unwomanly notions. You know not what mischief 
you are about. You would break out from home, 
neglect your proper work in life — which you alone 
can do — to engage in what is not your work, and 
what you cannot do. You clamor for Woman's 
Rights, forgetting that you enjoy all the most sa- 
cred rights you can have — those that spring from 
sacred duties — the right to be good wives and 
mothers. You renounce the true rights of woman, 
to grasp at those you were not made for and cannot 
have. What you really clamor for is the right to 
make men of yourselves. But you are no more 
fitted for the social, civil, and public functions of 
men than you are for those of husbands and fathers ; 
and the thought of your attempting the one, is 
scarcely less unnatural and monstrous, than that 
of the other ; certainly it is equally contrary to the 
constitution of your nature, and to God's order of 
things therein established ; it would only work 
mischief and ruin to yourselves, to the common- 
wealth, and to society in all its interests and rela- 
tions. 



AT GREYSTONES. 237 

" You demand a change in the legal relations 
of husband and wife. Because there are some bad 
husbands, as well as bad wives, you would have 
laws made, which, I am sure, would tend to the 
great increase of both. Bad husbands are the ex- 
ceptions. The laws go — as they should do — upon 
this supposition. You demand that they shall go 
upon the assumption of the contrary. Not only 
so, but you would subvert the very principle of our 
laws. They go upon the principle that marriage 
is a sacred union of mind, soul and heart, as well 
as of bodies — a union with one head, and that the 
man — in which there can of right be no conflicting 
interests. This principle is grounded in the ordi- 
nation of Grod as expressed in the constitution of 
man's and woman's nature, recognized by reason, 
and plainly taught in the Christian religion. You 
would have them go upon the principle that mar- 
riage is a contract of selfish convenience — a two- 
headed partnership, in which the separate interests 
of the parties, or rather your separate interests, 
which are all you seem to care for, shall be jeal- 
ously secured. 

" What would be the effect ? Why, as far 
as it had any, it would give occasion, and scope, 
and temptation to a thousand-fold more violations 



238 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

of sacred duty, and more domestic mischiefs and 
miseries than it would prevent. 

" You insist on the right of engaging in all 
the industrial and professional callings and employ- 
ments of men — or such of them as you may choose. 

" Well, I don't know as any thing stands in 
the way of this but public opinion — except, in the 
matter of becoming public ministers of religion, 
there are some remarkable words of St. Paul, com- 
monly understood as speaking by Divine direction, 
which bear rather hard upon the self-ordained Kev- 
erend Mrs. Black Brown. But she has braved St. 
Paul and public opinion both. You can all do the 
same. Perhaps you can change the public opinion. 
I rather think not. But you can brave it. You 
can enter on any career of activity now considered 
as exclusively within man's proper sphere — for I 
take it, of course, it is only in regard to such that 
you have any quarrel with public opinion. But 
with what result ? You cannot succeed. You 
could not do the work in competition with man, if 
all the opinion in the world gave you an equal 
chance. The world has a way of its own in such 
things. It will employ and pay those who do the 
world's work best. Perhaps you might make the 
men abstain from competition, or stay at home and 



AT GREYS TONES. 239 

take care of the house and nurse babies, to give 
you a clear field. This is doubtful. The great 
odds are you would unsex yourselves to littie pur- 
pose — spoil yourselves for being good women only 
to make unsuccessful men of yourselves. 

" But to cap the climax of your foolishness, 
you insist upon women having the same political 
rights as men. Not contented with being repre- 
sented at the polls by your fathers, brothers, hus- 
bands, and all other men that vote, you insist on 
going there in person, as the sacred right of wo- 
man, short of which nothing will content you ; 
though if suffrage were a sacred right, which it is 
not, there are thousands of young women and girls 
under twenty-one, equally capable of voting as you 
are, who might protest against being represented at 
the polls by you, and challenge the equal right of 
going there with you to cast their votes. But to 
leave them out of view — you demand that the 
Constitution of the State shall be so altered as to 
give you the same right of suffrage as the men en- 
joy. You demand also the same right to hold po- 
litical offices, and discharge the public functions of 
the State. This is what you ask for in the memo- 
rial to ,the Legislature, you have passed about for 
signatures here to-day. 



240 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

" Suppose you gain your end ? 

"What then? 

" Either : the women would not avail them- 
selves of their new rights — unless a few such ex- 
ceptional women as some here now ; and so nothing 
or but little would come of it. 

" Or, else : they would — which is what you de- 
sire and contemplate. 

" Suppose, then, all the women in the land to 
enter into politics, seek public offices, take sides in 
party conflicts, and throng the polls with the men. 

" I pass over the scenes in the legislative halls, 
and in the courts, which the reporters for the press 
might have to portray ; the nurseries added to the 
committee-rooms of the legislative halls and jury 
rooms of the courts ; and the ludicrous interruptions 
of public business and the course of justice, through 
mistaken reckoning of time or premature effects of 
fatigue and public cares — all which are possibilities 
in the case of women. I pass over the spectacles 
likely to be presented at the polls — particularly in 
the great towns where now the majority of the votes 
are cast, especially in times when party feeling runs 
high, as it does in nearly all elections now — pure 
and gentle and delicate women — if such could be 
supposed to go there, and that is what you would 



AT GEEYSTONES. 241 

have them do — jostled and hustled among rival 
crowds of brutal and ruffianly men, augmented by 
crowds of rival women of their own social standing 
and degree. I pass over also the possible neglect 
of the special duties of wives and mothers, and the 
moral injury to the children, the household discom- 
forts and domestic disunion that might thence en- 
sue. I pass over all this, and lay no stress upon 
it ; for I know all that can be said in reply. I put 
it out of sight, because there is a deeper and more 
thoughtful view I would have you take. 

" When you enter into politics and public life, 
you step out of your proper sphere, and you cannot 
do this without mischief to yourselves, to man, and to 
the interests of the State. Woman's relation to the 
State is through the family and the society of pri- 
vate life. Here is the sphere in which she is to 
serve her country. Here lies her influence — and 
influence is woman's true power — an influence 
graceful and gracious, beautiful and salutary — im- 
buing the minds of children with lofty and gener- 
ous sentiments, honor, justice and love of country, 
and keeping such sentiments alive and warm in the 
hearts of husbands, fathers, brothers, and all within 
her social circle — humanizing, softening, refining 

and ennobling the manners, tempers, and whole so- 
il 



242 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

cial life of man — and especially mediating between 
conflicting elements, smoothing the asperities and 
allaying the animosities of party spirit among men 
whose interests or sense of public duty put them in 
opposition to each other. She has this influence 
because she is not mixed up with the strife of par- 
ties. The moment she becomes so, it is gone. 
Men no longer sheathe the sword in her presence. 
She loses "her peculiar privilege as a woman— to be 
a reconciling bond. Besides the terrible risk of de- 
struction to domestic peace and union, that would 
ensue from difference of political opinions between 
husbands and wives, fathers and daughters, brothers 
and sisters — woman's outward activity in the pub- 
lic sphere would only aggravate the strife of par- 
ties. Her peculiar nature exposes her to the worst 
influences of politics. The predominance of feel- 
ing in her constitution, makes her apt to be carried 
away by popular excitement, and under its impul- 
ses to become less scrupulous, more passionate and 
more unjust than men — a truth history has given 
more than one memorable proof of. 

" Thus by engaging actively in politics and 
public life, you desert the only sphere in which you 
can serve your country, to enter into one where you 
are not needed, can do no good, and will surely 



AT GKEYSTONES. 243 

work harm. You violate the great moral order of 
things, established in your very nature and rela- 
tions ; and this inevitably involves the ruin of your 
proper character as women, and thereby the ruin 
of the dearest interests of society and of the hu- 
man race. 

" Away from the sacred sphere of home, eagerly 
mixing in politics and public life, competing with 
the men in all careers, challenging and clutching 
your rights at every turn — how could you preserve 
the gentleness, tenderness, refinement, delicacy, re- 
serve, purity, modesty — in a word, the chastity (by 
which I mean far more than is ordinarily meant) 
which constitutes the glory and charm of woman- 
hood — that which all men, the rudest and coars- 
est respect and show their feeling of, when, in 
the presence of a true woman, violence and ribaldry 
are hushed — that which in natures of better mould 
and finer culture begets the sentiments of reverence 
and chivalric devotion — that which even the worst 
of men demand in their sisters and their wives ? 
Your womanhood gone, all is gone — gone man's 
reverence for woman, to the great detriment of the 
best and noblest parts of man's nature — and gone 
forever from you all that draws man to you now in 
true manly love. Man wants a woman for his wife, 



244 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

a woman in his home ; and not another man. He 
will not marry you, when you become what your 
notions would inevitably make you. And without 
marriage, the dissolution of society and the extinc- 
tion of the human race is sure. The brute instinct 
will suffice for brutes, but not for the continuance 
of the human race, and if it could it would be the 
continuance of a species not worth continuance. 

" This is what would come of your notions, if 
carried fully out in universal practice. 

" But I have no fears. God in the heart of 
womanhood has provided a security for His Divine 
order of things, against such foolish and pernicious 
notions. Exceptional women may adopt and spread 
them all they can. Upon the great mass of women 
you will produce not the slightest impression. You 
may temporarily mislead a few true women. But 
the first touch of honest love for a right manly man, 
will put all this nonsense out of their heads. The 
lovely Paulina Paul is, I think, a true woman at 
heart. She is young, and a little bewildered by 
your sophistries now, but the time of her awaken- 
ing will come ; and then, as a happy wife and 
mother, I am sure she will be ashamed to remember 



AT GREYSTONES. 245 

her orations here to-day. The St. Anthony has no 
vocation for love and marriage. Her case is hope- 
less. But the number of such is small, and never 
will he large. It would stand in the way of God's 
plans for the world if it were otherwise." 

" There, Professor Clare, that is what I might 
have said, if I had said any thing." 

" I almost wish you had said it," replied the 
Professor. 

" I am glad he did not," said Mrs. Oldham, 
" though I have no fault to find with the matter of 
it. Yet I am scandalized by the way you put some 
things, and the expressions you use." 

" I am sorry for that," said the Doctor, " but it 
can hardly be well avoided, and I trust there is 
nothing improper in them." 

" But, Professor, I did preach the substance of 
this discourse in church last Sunday evening ; and 
it happened the next day that I was giving an ac- 
count of it at Pelham's, when a lady on a visit 
there said, with an air of surprise and grave re- 
buke : 

" ' Did you preach this on the Sabbath ? ' 

" c Yes, madam/ I replied, ( on Sunday evening, 
and I took for my text the words of St. Paul (Ephe- 



246 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

sians v. 22) : Wives ! submit yourselves unto your 
oivn husbands, as unto the Lord ; for the husband 
is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the Head 
of the Church. . . Therefore as the Church is 
subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own 
husbands in every thing! 

" ' Well/ said she, c Paid says lie sometimes 
spoke like a fool, and I think he did when he said 
that/ 

" I smiled inwardly at the good lady's sort of 
reverence, which could speak thns of St. Paul, and 
be shocked at my desecration of the Lord's day, or 
Sabbath, as she called it ; hut did not tell her my 
thoughts. She said she had many sympathies with 
the Woman's Eights women. I said I perceived it, 
though I was not aware of it before, and could only 
be sorry that my text and sermon, as well as the 
day I took to preach it, seemed displeasing to her 
taste." 



AT GREYSTOKES. 247 



CHAPTER XXIII 



OX DEE-DEEING. 



" I see, husband, that your iriend, Mr. Langdon. 
has been made a D. D" 

u Yes, poor fellow, I was writing to him a few 
days ago, and said in a postscript : c So you have 
got the handle to your name. Are you not 
ashamed ? ' I had a letter from him this morning, 
in which he asks what he has to be ashamed of. I 
wrote immediately in reply. But the letter has not 
gone yet. Would you like to hear it ? n 

Mrs. Oldham said she would. 

" It is in my drawer," said the Doctor, turning 
to open it. 

Mrs. Oldham was at the moment putting away 
some things in her drawer, having drawn it fully 
out — pulling, of course, the Doctor's drawer under 
the table out of his reach. 

" Ah, my drawer gone ! But take your time, 



248 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

my dear ; you wouldn't sleep well if you left any 
of your knick-knacks out of place or the least awry. 
I can wait. A good thing this make of our draw- 
ers — a good discipline. John Wesley tells us that 
while he was among the Moravians, his life was so 
directed by rule, that if he was engaged in writing 
a letter when the bell struck, he was required to 
leave off immediately, without stopping to com- 
plete an unfinished word. The object of the rule 
— they told him — was to mortify the l lust of fin- 
ishing/ That is a lust that does not need any 
mortifying in me, or in Lilly either — unless when 
she gets hold of a new book of Miss Yonge's, or 
some other charming story. But it is a lust that 
is very strong in you, and perhaps I might help to 
a little salutary mortification of it, by insisting on 
your shutting your drawer the instant I want to 
open mine. But then I should lose the chance of 
exercising my own patience, and might try yours, 
which needs no trial, besides interfering with your 
bump of order, which I have a great respect for." 

" Well., husband, my lust of finishing is not so 
strong but I can lay aside the most fascinating 
book, when I have any thing else to do — as I have 
just done with Adam Bede, in order to write a let- 
ter to my mother." 



AT GREY ST ONES. 249 

" That is true, wife, I am bound to con- 
fess, that if your lust of finishing is very strong, 
your sense of duty is stronger, and I should not 
need to interfere in any case where duty was con- 
cerned." 

" I have finished now," said she, " and you 
can have your drawer. So let me hear your let- 
ter." 

" Here it is," said the Doctor, taking it out and 
beginning to read : 

" My Dear Langdon, 

u Do you ask what you have to be ashamed of? 
Why, of being made a D. D., of course. 

" You have fallen from an eminence. You 
have dropped out of the select and distinguished 
circle of the un-dee-deed, into the great titled herd. 
You have lost an honorable and enviable distinc- 
tion. 

" Nor this alone ; you are now under the neces- 
sity of submitting to be impaled on one or the other 
of the sharp horns of a piercing dilemma. 

" For know, my unhappy friend, that in re- 
gard to this matter of dee-dee-ness, or state of 
being dee-deed, or un-dee-deed, there are four pos- 
sible predicaments. There are : 
11* 



250 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

1. The deservedly, and) , ., , 

J 7 \ un-dee-deed. 

2. The undeservedly ) 

3. The deservedly, and) 

4. The undeservedly ) 

" Now, when you were in the un-dee-deed state 
— fortunate man if you had known your good for- 
tune — no man could reasonably ask you if you were 
not ashamed. For you belonged either to the first 
or to the second class. If to the former, it was no 
cause of shame that you had not a title you did not 
deserve to have — rather the shame would have been 
in having it. If to the latter, it was surely no cause 
for shame to you, whatever it might be to the un- 
discerning and ill-judging colleges that neglected 
to adorn your just desert. And either way, whether 
deservedly or undeservedly un-dee-deed, nobody 
could, without ridiculous absurdity, ask you if you 
were not ashamed of being a D. D., when you were 
not one. One might as well ask if you are not 
ashamed of being a rhinoceros, when he knows, and 
you know, and all the world knows you are not a 
rhinoceros. 

" Nor, for the same reasons, had you any cause 
to be ashamed on account of the company you were 
in — the honorable fraternity of the un-dee-ded ; for 
they, like you, had no cause to blush for themselves. 



AT GKEYSTONES. 251 

So therefore there was absolutely no ground for the 
question. 

" But now you have not only lost the simple 
manly dignity of an untitled name, and fallen from 
the select circle of the un-dee-deed, into the great 
and ever-increasing herd of clerical D. D/s, likely 
to be augmented by a host of unclerical D. D/s, led 
on by my friend, the clever and eloquent lay- 
preacher just decorated at Cambridge, but, as I 
said, you are liable to be pierced by one or the other 
horn of a cruel dilemma. 

" For, either you are or you are not possessed 
of the intrinsic and essential quality of true dee- 
dee-ness — a profound knowledge of theology, and 
an aptitude to teach it, withal. If you are, you 
have reason to be ashamed of the great company 
of mere titular D. D/s you have fallen into ; and 
if you are not, you are yourself a mere titular D. D., 
and have reason to be ashamed of yourself for being 
a sign without the thing signified — a doctor's door- 
plate with no doctor within — in short, a pretence 
and a sham ; and so, either way, you have reason 
for being ashamed. But I am not of the spirit of 
the man who, in a time of some quite wide-spread 
disaster, exclaimed : 6 Well, wife, thank God our 



252 DOCTOE OLDHAM 

neighbors are as bad off as ourselves/ On the con- 
trary, I subscribe myself, 

" "With hearty condolence, 

" Your sympathizing friend, 

" Oldham." 

" But, husband, you don't mean that your 
friend Langdon is not deserving of his title ? " 

" No, my dear, he is an abler man, and a better 
theologian, than nine- tenths of those that have it. 
But our whole system of academic degrees is an 
absurd farce. The degrees in the arts are conferred 
in course on young men, four-fifths of whom would 
find it hard to stand a strict examination upon the 
latinity of their diplomas. And as to the honorary 
degrees, they are no honor at all. Popular city 
preachers, or ministers of important parishes, are 
made D. D.'s, who could not, for their lives, give a 
clear and accurate statement of the doctrines and 
logical connection of the doctrines of a single theo- 
logical system, still less a just, comparative and 
critical exposition of the differences and agreements 
of the different systems, and, least of all, of the 
principles that underlie and determine their sys- 
tematic relations ; while LL. LVs light on the sur- 
prised heads of men who know no more of Civil, or 



AT GREYSTONES. 253 

of Canon law, or of the difference between them, 
than Field Marshal Wellington and Marshal Blu- 
cher ell-ell-deed at Oxford, or General Jackson and 
General Taylor ell-ell-deed by our own University 
of Cambridge." 

" What are thesa degrees worth, then, hus- 
band ? " 

" Nothing at all, my dear, and never will be, 
until they are given only when well-earned." 



254 DOCTOR OLDHAM 



CHAPTEK XXIV. 

TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE. 

" Ah, my son/' said the Doctor one day, talking 
to Phil, ' i get the habit of always discerning the 
distinct in the inseparable. There are some per- 
sons that are forever confounding them. They can- 
not distinguish between things that always go to- 
gether, especially if they are at all blended or lie 
very close to each other." 

" But there is another class of persons/' said 
Phil, " that are forever puzzling a plain question, 
or avoiding the force of a just argument, by dis- 
tinctions without a difference — mere tweedledum 
and tweedledee." 

" Ah, Phil, rail not at the distinction between 
tweedledum and tweedledee — for there is a real 
difference between them, and often a momentous 



AT GKEYSTONES. 255 

difference. Beware how you think contemptuously 
of it. No matter how slight it may seem, it may 
be of infinite consequence. The angle where two 
straight lines meet, may be infinitesimally small, but 
produce the lines and they become heaven-wide 
apart. It is a difference on which the dearest in- 
terests of truth and human welfare may turn. It 
has often convulsed the world of thought and of 
action. The profoundest agitations — religious and 
political — which history records, have sprung from 
it. Humanity is not thus moved for nothing. I 
have a great respect for the difference between 
tweedledum and tweed ledee. 

" But I have no respect for the difference be- 
tween tweedledum and tweedledum ; and that is a 
distinction some persons — I grant you, Phil — lay 
great stress upon, and are always parading, to the 
great detriment of all rational argumentation." 

" They have a notion they evince superior logi- 
cal acuteness," said Phil. 

" Logic/' said the Doctor, " is a very good 
thing for a good thinker, but a very bad thing for 
one who is not. There's Mr. Grim — he is intensely 
logical, but his logic only serves to illustrate the 
poorness of his thought. A man must be able at 
times to get above his logic, or below it — which- 



256 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

ever you choose — in order to use it to any very good 
purpose." 

" But logic is thinking, is it not ? " said Phil. 

" Yes," replied the Doctor, " but not all thinking. 
There is other thinking besides logical. There is 
thinking — and of the highest sort — which is the 
very reverse of the logical, which sees and seizes by 
immediate intuition, without any process of deduc- 
tion, great truths, that logic never gives — all the 
primary principles of mathematics, metaphysics, 
and morals — truths that are true because they are 
true, and not because something else is true from 
which their truth flows — truths of the highest im- 
portance in themselves, and indispensable also for 
the uses of logic. 

" Logic, my son, is of great use to those who 
have good sense and discretion, and know how to 
use it at proper times and in a proper way. But I 
reckon among the greatest social pests, those per- 
sons who are for having an argument on every thing 
that comes up, though it be a matter of fact as 
palpable as the nose on your face ; who are not 
content to believe that a horse has four legs, with- 
out a syllogism running round in an edifying circle 
to prove it : quadrupeds have four legs ; horses are 
quadrupeds ; therefore horses have four legs ; and 



AT GREYSTONES. 257 

whose arguments, even if not circular, and though 
their premises and conclusions may all be true, yet 
half the time have no more logical connection — or 
liang-together-ness, as the Germans call it — than if 
I should say : Adam was the first man ; Methusa- 
leh was the oldest man ; therefore St. Paul was 
shipwrecked. 

" You may find your familiarity with logic of 
great advantage at the bar, if you use it rightly, 
especially in a dialectical way as a critical test of 
the value of the arguments you oppose. But be- 
ware of usiug its technical forms or peculiar terms, 
unless they be such as usage has made generally 
familiar and intelligible. Show the superiority of 
your logical training, by the lucid order and method 
of your own reasoning, and by the quickness with 
which you detect, and the clearness with which you 
expose the sophistry of others — and all in the sim- 
ple ordinary good English, which men of true cul- 
ture find sufficient for most purposes of private or 
of public speech/' 



258 DOCTOR OLDHAM 



CHAPTER XXV. 

SOME OF THE DOCTOR'S NOTIONS ABOUT CONVERSATION — HIS PRACTICE 
IS ANOTHER QUESTION. 

" What have you been writing ? " said Mrs. Old- 
ham, one evening, as the Doctor shut his portfolio, 
and was putting it in his drawer. 

" A slight sketch, or rather some hints for an 
essay," he replied. 

" On what, husband ? » 

" On Conversation." 

" Bead it, will you ? " said she. 

The Doctor read as follows : 

" There goes great tact to the keeping up of 
agreeable conversation, in a small social circle. The 
talk should be general. It is death to all quiet, 
rational enjoyment, to have the conversation broken 
up into two or three separate dialogues on different 



AT GREY STONES. 259 

subjects, crossing and jostling each, other, and fill- 
ing the room with a confusion of sounds. There 
should be but one topic at a time, and the transi- 
tions easy and natural — the ball going round and 
round, so that each one that chooses, may hit it in 
turn, each hitting it in the right direction, to keep 
it going as long as it is agreeable. It is a great 
nuisance to have it struck wrongly — by feeble dabs, 
bringing it to the ground, when it should have been 
kept going on, or by great brute knocks, sending it 
off at a tangent, where nobody cares to go. 

" Among the most disagreeable persons in so- 
ciety, is your man of inexorable facts — nothing but 
facts — who is always lying in wait to spring like a 
tiger from a jungle, or a catamount from a tree, 
upon any trifling and altogether immaterial inaccu- 
racy of fact, that may happen to be referred to in 
passing, and pull the whole conversation to the 
ground, or drag it away into some thorny thicket 
of irrelevant debate. I have often been present 
where the conversation was flowing on in a full, 
deep, rich stream of mingled wit and wisdom, 
thought and argument, sense and sentiment — all 
aglow with the warmth of imagination and the 
brightness of fancy — when a slight momentary 
glance, in the merest passing way, at some fact 



260 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

true enough for all the purpose of the allusion, 
would bring up the inexorable fact-man, contradict- 
ing or putting right his unhappy victim, with an 
air as if the least want of exactitude or complete- 
ness of statement about the matter of fact, de- 
stroyed all the force of reasoning, all justness of 
thought, or sacredness of sentiment — though it 
really did not come within a hundred miles of doing 
so. To make a slip of the tongue, and speak of 
the Poor Widow's three mites, would spoil for him 
the effect of the most touching discourse on the 
beauty of self-sacrificing beneficence. It will not 
do for you to talk to him about the baseness of 
treachery, if you should happen to make a mistake 
as to the value of the thirty pieces of silver Judas 
Iscariot sold his Lord for ; and he would instantly 
become insensible to the horrors of St. Bartholo- 
mew's, if you should fall into an error as to the 
precise day of the month on which the massacre of 
the Huguenots began. 

"Another social pest is your inveterate pun- 
ster, without the gift of knowing how to use his tal- 
ent. An occasional pun, a good sparkling one, 
which does not disturb the current of discourse, or 
when there is no particular current to be disturbed, 
is a very pleasant thing. But who wants to have 



AT GREYSTONES. 261 

an interesting conversation wrested violently out of 
its course by a ruthless pun — no matter how bright 
and good in itself. There's Oglethorpe — he is a 
Philadelphian — whatever the subject or the mood 
of the company may be — he is perpetually letting 
off a volley of puns, without the least grace of dis- 
cretion, some of them very poor, many of them ex- 
ecrable, and scarcely one of them that does not un- 
pleasantly interfere with the course of the conver- 
sation. 

" But there are few things more wasted and out of 
place, than the bright-minded man in the company 
of the dull ; a genial, juiceful man, simple, cordial 
and kindly, playful and gleesome, full of fancy and 
imagination, wit, humor, fun and pathos, mingled 
and blended, bubbling up and running over in a 
bright flowing stream of grand and rich thought, 
noble and sweet sentiment, beautiful images, lively 
description, sparkling traits — all this wealth of 
spiritual riches thrown away upon the green, stag- 
nant dulness of the minds and hearts around him, 
or worse than thrown away among swine that tram- 
ple the pearls, and turn to rend the unsuspicious 
scatterer— envious mediocrities, imputing all to van- 
ity, and watching for something to cavil or to sneer 
at ; or serious c professors of religion/ setting him 



262 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

down for a light-minded trifler, altogether wanting 
in ' vital piety ' ; or conventional worldly dullards, 
polished inanities, capable themselves of nothing 
but soft insipidities, or pompous platitudes, stand- 
ing much upon dignity, and superciliously lifting 
their eyebrows, as much as to say, c an eccentric, 
improper person/ 

" There is another class of men, who are a great 
social nuisance — your formalists, of whom my Lord 
Bacon somewhere says something to this effect — 
6 that it is a ridiculous thing and fit for satire, to 
see what shifts and contrivances these formalists 
have, what prospectives to make superficies, that 
hath only length and breadth, appear a solid, that 
hath also depth/ Among the absurdities of these 
men, the most ridiculous (if it did not also excite 
one's spleen) is the way some of them have of im- 
agining they enjoy a monopoly of the gift of proph- 
esying. Propose any scheme, advocate any plan 
not of their devising, forecast any results, they 
shake their empty heads, as if nobody's eyes were 
so good to see into a millstone with as theirs. 

" There is something very impressive in solemn 
silence — to those who are impressed by it." 



AT GKETSTONES. 263 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

PRELIMINARY TO ANOTHER. 

Some learned man — I forget his name — has writ- 
ten a history — I cannot recollect of what country, 
but I believe it is Iceland — in which occurs a chap- 
ter entitled " Of Owls/' containing only these 
words : " There are no owls in Iceland." 

I wish to devote a chapter to the record of a 
remark of the Doctor's, which I think is a nega- 
tive pregnant, of more sententious fulness than 
even the learned historian's. 

I am willing to be considered an humble imi- 
tator of the learned man, in the matter of the 
length of my chapter ; but I do not wish it to be 
thought I have borrowed the title of it from him. 
I should have put it at the head of my chapter if 



264 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

he had never written his — for it is the only title 
the chapter could have with any fitness. It is as 
much mine as though he had not used it hefore me. 

A learned friend of mine casting his eyes over 
what is said above — but not, alas ! until after the 
casting of the chapter — tells me that my vindica- 
tion of my title for the next chapter is needless ; 
for that the learned historian's chapter is entitled 
" Of Snakes," and declares : " There are no Snakes 
in Iceland/' 

Now what to do ? O o-repeoTvirrov arepeorvTrrov 
— stereotype plates are stereotyped. It is much 
easier to fill out the blank of this page with a con- 
fession of my mistake, than to make the needful 
alterations in the plate. I do so therefore. 

Besides, it is possible my learned friend may be 
himself mistaken — in which case all that stands 
above should stand. Let every reader decide, if he 
can, on which side the error lies ; and if he cannot, 
let him comfort himself with the thought how little 
it matters — only as, doubtless, the Icelanders would 
rather be without snakes than without owls, let him 
hope that I am the one in error : so shall the char- 
ity of his spirit be a blessing to himself — which is 
another comfort. How much good one may get 
from every thing ! 



AT G KEYSTONES. 265 



CHAPTER XXVII 



OF OWLS. 



" Owls/' said the Doctor, " can do nofhing but 
look wise." 



266 DOOTOE OLDHAM 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE DOCTOR SAYS SOME THINGS THAT SOUND YERY STRAKGE TO MRS. 
GARLAND — BAD CHRISTIANS AND GOOD HEATHENS — MR. GRIM — THE 
NECESSITY FOR A GOOD GOD. 

" Opened Japan to Christianity, have they ? " 
said the Doctor. " What a pity ! It did not 
matter much when the British opened China. The 
people were already so bad Christianity could not 
make them much worse. But the Japanese were 
so much better and better off than they are likely 
to become now." 

" What shocking stuff you are saying/' ex- 
claimed Mrs. Garland. She is a friend of Mrs. 
Oldham's, and was passing the evening at Grey- 
stones. The two ladies were sitting on the sofa at 
the farther end of the library, consulting about an 
embroidered pincushion, when Mrs. Garland's at- 



AT GREYSTONES. 267 

tention was arrested by trie Doctor's remark to 
Professor Clare. 

" What shocking stuff/' said she. •" What do 
you mean by it ? Do you think that Christianity 
makes heathen nations worse ? " 

" I know what he means," said Mrs. Oldham, 
" though I wish he would not speak in such a way. 
He means that bad men from among us will get 
there first, and make the people worse before good 
men can make them better." 

" That reminds me/' said the Professor, " of a 
story I have heard the once famous Captain Eiley 
used to tell. He had occasion to put his ship on 
the beach, on the coast of some Mohammedan coun- 
try, in order to repair her bottom, and was obliged 
to take out his cargo and send it on shore. He ap- 
plied to the nearest Cadi, or magistrate of the dis- 
trict, for a guard to protect his goods from theft. 
The Cadi told him he could' have a guard if he 
wished; 'but/ said he, ' can you trust your own 
men ? ' c yes/ replied the captain. 6 What do 
you want of a guard, then ? ' said the Cadi ; c there 
is not a Christian within a hundred miles.' " 

" Well," said the Doctor, " Captain Eiley's is 
not the best authority in the world, yet the story 
may be true for all that. The Moslemim have vices 



268 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

enough, but thieving, I believe, is not one of thein, 
at least not of the Turks. In the bazaars of Con- 
stantinople* I am told, the merchants are not afraid 
to go away and leave their goods exposed, with the 
prices marked on them, and if a purchaser comes 
along, he takes what he wants, and leaves the mo- 
ney in its place. 

" But however this may be, it is a sad thing to 
consider in how many cases bad Christians have 
carried corruption, vice and disease among less 
civilized people, before the better influences of 
genuine Christian teaching and example could get 
hold of them. And I am particularly sorry for the 
Japanese, if the accounts we have recently had of 
them be correct. I have seldom read such pleasing 
descriptions of an industrious, ingenious, contented, 
virtuous and happy people." 

" But why do you talk of bad Christians ? " 
said Mrs. Garland. " " It seems to me bad Chris- 
tians are the same thing as no Christians at all." 

" I suppose, then," replied the Doctor, " you 
would say bad heathen are no heathen at all ? " 

" No, I would not say that — but it seems to 
me that a person cannot be a Christian unless he 
is good." 

" Nor a heathen without being bad ? " asked 
the Doctor. 



AT GEEYSTONES. 269 

" Well/' she replied, " I suppose some may be 
naturally worse than others, but none of them 
good." 

" Why not ? " returned the Doctor. " The 
grace of God is everywhere to make all men good, 
who will concur with its ' godly motions/ as the 
Prayer Book has^it. Even the heathen Seneca 
could say : c A Holy Spirit dwells within us ; no 
man is a good man without God/ That* is a bet- 
ter doctrine than the Keverend Calvin Grim's, on 
the one hand, and Dr. Pelagius Blowbag's on the 
other. For my part I don't doubt there may be 
heathen who are better men than many Christians 
are. There may be — I thank God — very Christian 
heathen, as there undoubtedly are — I am sorry to 
say — very heathenish Christians ; and certainly a 
good heathen is a great deal better than a bad 
Christian." 

" But what is to make them good ? " said Mrs. 
Garland. " They have no knowledge of the Gos- 
pel." 

" The Devil has a very correct knowledge of 
the Gospel," replied the Doctor ; " does it make 
him good ? " 

" But he is out of its pale," said she ; " the 
Gospel is for men." 



270 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

" Well, look around you, then, in our own 
neighborhood, and you will see a great many men 
nearly as bad as bad men can be. No, my dear 
lady," continued the Doctor, " the knowledge of 
the Gospel neither necessarily makes men good, nor 
is it an indispensable condition to their becoming 
so. Men may be bad with it — bad Christians, and 
good without it — good heathen. 

" >To -creed of doctrines, however true and sub- 
lime, and no code of morals, however pure and no- 
ble, can make men good by their own force alone. 
The Gospel, if you look at it as a mere creed or 
code, is as ineffectual as the Yedas and Shastras, 
the laws of Lycurgus, or the institutes of Menu. 
"What is the use of advising a man with broken 
legs to get up and walk. Set his legs, and in due 
time he will walk — and run, if need be. Every 
man knows he is not as good as he ought to be ; 
and no man can make himself so of his own force 
alone. What he needs is Divine aid — a power 
within him working with him to help him effectu- 
ally to be and to do what he ought. Does the All- 
Father deny this help to any of His creatures ? 
does He give it only to those who know the won- 
derful story of the way in which it comes to us ? 
God forbid. His Good Spirit is in every human 



AT GREYS TONES. 27l 

heart — a power to goodness in every one — working 
in the reason and conscience of all men — in hea- 
thendom through the dim tradition of primitive in- 
struction never wholly lost ; in Christendom through 
the clearer light of the Gospel ; so that : in every 
nation whosoever feareth God and worketh right- 
eousness ' — tries to ohey the Divine impulse, a,nd to 
be good according to the light he has — c is accepted 
of Him/ It is impossible for us to say how much 
light in the head is a necessary condition to good- 
ness in the heart. God alone knows. But this I 
am sure of, that c clear views of the vital truths of 
the Gospel ' — as our neighbor Mr. Evangelicus Fine- 
phrase calls them — are by no means so essential as 
he thinks they are. I have known very great theo- 
logians with very little goodness, and many men 
with wonderfully c clear views of vital truths/ and a 
wonderfully poor sense of honor and honesty ; and, 
on the other hand, I have known poor ignorant wo- 
men, with souls full of love to God and man, who, 
if their salvation depended on it, could not have 
told the difference between grace and great coats. 
I have seen them meekly and bravely bearing the 
heavy burden of a weary life with the noblest integ- 
rity ; and I have sat by their death-beds, and have 
gone with them down the Valley of the Shadow of 



272 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

Death, as far as I could go, and I know they were 
filled with a Divine peace that 'passeth under- 
standing ' — not from clear views, but from God and 
God's love in their souls." 

" But," said Mrs. Garland, " if the grace of 
God is all over the earth, and in every human heart, 
what is the necessity of sending the Gospel to the 
heathen ? " 

" I have never admitted that it was a necessity, 
so far as their salvation is concerned," said the 
Doctor, "however much it may be our duty to 
send it." 

" But what is the use of sending it ? " said she. 

" Because, though not an absolute necessity, it- 
may be a very great benefit ; because, though they 
can, by God's grace, be good without it, they may 
be better with it. It supplies more favorable con- 
ditions for a higher degree of moral elevation in 
this life. Unenlightened goodness is good, but en- 
lightened goodness is preferable. The light of the 
Gospel increases their responsibilities, but it en- 
larges their moral sphere. They are judged now 
according to the light they have ; with more privi- 
leges, a higher standard." 

"But," interposed Mrs. Garland, "how can 
the heathen be saved without faith in Christ ? 



AT GKEYSTONES. 



2?3 



The Saviour Himself said : e he that believeth and 
is baptized shall be saved ; but he that believeth 
not shall be damned/ " 

" True/' replied the Doctor, u but to whom did 
our Lord say that ? Look and see/' said he, hand- 
ing her the New Testament, open at the place, 
(Mark xvi. 15, 16.) 

" To the Apostles," she said, looking at the 
passage. 

" Just before His Ascension, was it not ? " he 
continued, " when He was bidding them 6 go into 
all the world and preach the Gospel ■ ? " 

" So it appears," she answered. 

" Did not the fearful saying of His you have 
quoted, relate then to those to whom the Gospel 
should be preached and authenticated ? " 

" Certainly," said she. 

" And looking at it as it stands there, should 
you say Our Lord had any others in His mind ? " 

" I confess not." 

" Has His saying, then, any bearing at all on 
the case of those who know nothing of the Gos- 
pel ? " 

" Well, I don't know — it would seem it has 

not." 

" Seem ! " said the Doctor, " why, ninety-nine 
12* 



274 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

hundredths, probably, of the human race, for six 
thousand years, have died without knowing the 
story of God's love in sending His Son into our 
world ; do you believe that because of their igno- 
rance of it, God withheld from them the grace of 
His Good Spirit in their hearts, and so doomed 
their spiritual existence to be an infinite, eternal 
failure of its proper end ? " 

" It does seem dreadful to believe so," she re- 
plied. 

" Well, never think for a moment you are un- 
der any obligation to believe such a monstrous 
thing. Besides/' continued the Doctor, " the very 
faith that is required of those to whom the Gospel 
is preached, does not consist in a mere intellectual 
acceptance of its truth of facts and doctrines. It 
is a moral and practical disposition — a spirit and 
will of childlike submission and obedience to what 
one knows to be true and right — and that is a spirit 
which, through God's grace, may be attained by 
those who are untaught in the facts and doctrines 
of the Gospel, and so they may pass away into a 
higher sphere with the very essence of saving faith 
in their souls, ready to unfold and embrace the 
truth revealed to them in the clearer light of a 
brighter world." 



AT GBEYSTONES. 275 

" Well," said Mrs. Garland, " I never heard 
any thing like this before. Did you ? " she added, 
turning to Mrs. Oldham. 

" Yes ; I have heard rny husband say the same 
in substance before. But I never indulge in any 
speculations on such things. I am content to leave 
it all to the Good Lord ; I have boundless trust in 
His wisdom and love, to make all things right in 
the end/' 

" An excellent disposition, my dear wife, espe- 
cially in a woman, and a happiness for all who do 
not feel the necessity to speculate, and upon whom 
such questions never press — if only they really turn 
their minds away from them, and do not, through 
reverence for unwise instruction, attempt to hold 
both sides of a contradiction, and believe in things 
dishonorable to God and revolting to conscience. 
Mysteries we must believe ; he that will explain all 
things, and believe in nothing that is not altogether 
explicable, must soon come to have a creed of less 
than one article ; for all things go out into mystery 
— every thing explicable rests on something inex- 
plicable — the ground of all things must be ground- 
less. But contradictions we cannot really believe — 
contradictions to conscience we should not try to 
believe ; I was going to say it does us harm to try, 



276 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

but that I recollect how much reason I have had to 
see what a blessed thing it is that wrong-headed 
heads and right-hearted hearts dwell in peace to- 
gether in mauy of the most estimable persons I 
have ever known/' 

" Well/' said Mrs. Garland, " you talk very 
differently from Mr. Grim. I heard him preach 
the other day from the very text I quoted to you ; 
and he urged the sending of the Gospel to the 
heathen on the ground that they were all perishing 
for want of its light." 

" Yes, I heard him/' replied the Doctor, " and 
the whole drift of his discourse was to the effect 
that God would condemn the heathen to everlasting 
death for not believing in a Saviour they had never 
heard of. I could hardly resist the impulse to get 
up and say : ' my friends, let us before all things 
have a good God ' — and ( common sense in relig- 
ion/ 

" Mr. Grim is a conscientious man, and preaches 
according to what he thinks true. But his repre- 
sentations of God would overshadow the universe 
to me with an infinite horror of blackness of dark- 
ness. It seems to me scarcely possible but every 
child and simple uncultivated person must get the 
impression from his preaching, that what God was 



AT GREYSTONES. 277 

for, was principally to be ever on the alert to get 
occasion against His creatures for their condemna- 
tion, and that practical religion and the problem of 
human life resolves itself into a perpetual sharp 
lookout against this on the part of His creatures." 

" husband, it is painful to hear you say so ! " 
exclaimed Mrs. Oldham, 

" It is nothing but the truth, my dear, and I 
am as sorry for that as you can be. I don't say he 
thinks so or feels so himself, in any clear, conscious 
way. But it is all along of his natural tempera- 
ment and of his unhappy religious instruction, that 
he should in all honesty preach in a way to beget 
in children and simple folk the religion of servile 
fear rather than of filial trust and love. It must 
in some cases have an influence, more or less, to re- 
press or distort the freest and happiest unfolding 
of the religious spirit in them ; but for the most 
part God and God's love in their souls is so strong, 
that they will take but little real harm. Which is 
something I am heartily rejoiced to believe." 



278 DOCTOR OLDHAM 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

PROFESSOR CLARE GETS BACK TO JAPAN, AND THE DOCTOR IS UNDULY 
SEVERE UPON CANT AND THE GOSPEL OF COTTON FIELDS. 

" But to coine back to where we started/' said 
Professor Clare, " yon will not deny the ultimate 
benefits to China and Japan, that must result from 
opening those countries to the influences of civili- 
zation and Christianity ? " 

u No/' replied the Doctor, " only I must remind 
you that if China and Japan, and the whole heathen 
world, were to become civilized and christianized 
to-morrow, as much as New York is to-day, the 
millennium would be very far from having arrived. 
The spectacle of human society would be far from 
satisfactory to the demands of reason or the wishes 
of a good heart. Still, I don't question but Divine 
Providence may bring good out of man's worst 



AT GREYSTONES. 279 

doings. The thing I object to is the very common 
habit of making Grod's overrulings the justification 
of man's evil doings — particularly in such cases as 
these. What right had we to send a formidable 
naval force into their waters, and overawe the Jap- 
anese into a treaty of commercial relations with us, 
to which they were averse ? " 

" But/' said the Professor, " ought they not to 
come into the great family of nations, and within 
the sphere of international law ? " 

" No/' replied the Doctor, " unless they choose 
to do so. So far, indeed, as international law con- 
sists in the principles of natural justice, they were 
already bound by it on the high sea, or wherever 
else they were brought into relations with us by 
their own choice, or by circumstances other than 
force on our part. 

" But the mere conventional rules of interna- 
tional law are of just force only upon such nations 
as accede to them, because they choose to come into 
such relations with other nations, as make the adop- 
tion of them a matter of mutual fitness and ad- 
vantage. Every individual among us is bound by 
the rules of justice towards his neighbor, but he is 
his own judge as to the degree of intimate inter- 
course he will maintain with him. No man has a 



280 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

right to block up the highway ; but every man has 
a right to keep his own gates shut — and even if he 
is not neighborly and kind in the matter, you can- 
not make it ground of assault or violence. So with 
nations. If they do not choose to trade with us, 
we have no right to compel them to do so, still less 
to impose upon barbarous nations, by force or fear, 
treaty stipulations for our own advantage, which 
we might naturally expect them to break — perhaps 
even calculating upon their violating them — and 
then to make every little infraction a pretext for 
invasion, conquest, or new demands. Which is 
very much the British way of doing things. 

" No, sir, neither the British in forcing open 
the gates of China to the opium trade, nor our gov- 
ernment in compelling the Japanese into a com- 
mercial treaty, went upon any other law than the 
immoral law of the strongest ; and the motive in 
both cases was no better than the principle — the 
mere greed of gain. Yet we both try to cover up 
from ourselves the injustice of the principle, and 
the meanness of the motive, by talking about ' the 
great family of nations/ ( international law/ ' bene- 
fit to the barbarians/ and the like. 

" I have a great dislike to hypocrisy and cant 
taken singly ; but when they go together, they in- 



AT GEE YS TONES. 281 

spire a tenfold aversion. A bold bad man who 
scorns to deny or excuse his wickedness, is a bad 
enough sight ; but he is respectable compared with 
the sneaking hypocrite, who tries to cover up his 
wickedness and meanness by pious phrases, expect- 
ing to delude you — perhaps deluding himself — into 
the notion that he is a right saintly man. 

" The ostrich thrusts his head into the covert 
of a bush, and does not know that he leaves all his 
hindward parts exposed to view." 

" He is a very disgusting object, sir." 
" This reminds me of a pamphlet put out within 
a year or two, purporting to be by a New York 
merchant — though the man, I believe, has no title 
to the name — but at all events evidently a person 
of much low-bred conceit, who writes in bad English 
and worse taste. The principal thing, however, 
to disgust one, is the attempt to sanctify a project 
of mean selfishness, by the cant of Christian love. 
The man overflows with such sweet charity for 
the African negroes, that he would have them cap- 
tured, and forced over here from the seats where 
God planted them, solely to save their souls, by 
bringing them under the blessed influences of 'Gos- 
pel light and love — as many of them only, however, 
as can by dint of hard flogging, be made profitable 



282 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

in growing cotton ! Delightful to see such fervors 
of Christian love, such pious concern for souls ! 
Such mercy 

is twice bless' d ; 
It blesseth him that takes and him that gives ! 

"One would imagine such precious Christian 
love would have quickened him to see and to preach 
a suhlimer height of heroic charity — hard work and 
hard flogging pushed to the extent of disparting 
soul and body as soon as possible after the negroes 
had imbibed enough of Gospel light and love to 
save their souls, so as to make room for fresh car- 
goes to be brought under the same soul-saving pro- 
cesses, to be forwarded in turn with equal dispatch 
to the realms of bliss — leaving their place of earthly 
privilege to others : and thus, on and on, until the 
souls of the whole dusky race shall be saved ! It 
would make a brisk carrying trade. The traffic of 
love would be profitable. Godliness would be gain. 
Yerily such virtue would rind its exceeding great 
reward here, and foremost mention at the Great 
Day : Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the 
kingdom prepared especially for you ; for I was in 
darkness and ye brought me to the light and love 
of the blessed cotton fields. Yerily I say unto you, 



AT GREYSTONES. 283 

inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these 
my brethren, ye did it unto Me." 

" But what could be his motive/' said Professor 
Clare, " a Northern man to come out in favor of the 
revival of this infamous traffic ? " 

U I don't know/' replied the Doctor ; "possibly 
he was fool enough to be the dupe of his own cant 
— possibly the vanity of wishing to make a sensa- 
tion (if so he failed) — possibly the mean purpose 
of currying favor in certain quarters — possibly a 
desire to add the carrying trade in negroes to his 
other callings — possibly the mere wish to enlarge 
the market for bread — temporal and spiritual. 

" I can honor slaveholders, such as I know there 
are thousands at the South — good men, trying to 
do their duty in the state in which God's provi- 
dence and man's laws have put them, without their 
leave asked. 

" I can even respect, at least the honest bold- 
ness of the man there, who says : c I don't pretend 
to Christian love and fine sentiment ; I want more 
negroes from Africa for my own ends — to make 
money by making them make cotton for me.' 

"But a Northern man advocating the revival 
of the African Slave Trade, out of Christian love 
for the souls of the negroes ! 



284 doctor oldham 

" Bah ! 

" I am of opinion the Good Lord finds more 
darkness to be dispelled from his than from the 
darkest Congo mind, and much more to be mended 
in his heart, before he can be a well-saved soul." 



AT GKETSTONES. 285 



CHAPTER XXX. 



MR. STOCKJOB PILE ALDERMAN GUBBINS — HARDHEAD BULLION BOB 

SLENDER — IT TAKES SOMETHING INSIDE TO MAKE SOMETHING 

WHICH IS DECLARED AT THE END OF THE CHAPTER. 



' c \No, my dear/' said the Doctor, " Mr. Stockjob 
Pile is not a gentleman. He is a shrewd man, who 
has made a large fortune by ' operations ' in Wall 
street, and is a great man among men of his own 
class, and also among flunkeys and snobs of every 
class. He is a very rich man, but I am unhappily 
unable to entertain any special respect for a man 
who is nothing but a rich man — particularly if he 
challenges deference on that account from men 
without wealth, but infinitely his superiors in sense, 
intelligence, thorough breeding and culture. 

" I like a man none the less for being rich, and 
am just as ready to cultivate his acquaintance as 
any other man's, if he is something more and bet- 
ter than a mere rich man — a man of good sense, 



286 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

right principles and honorable sentiments, and well- 
bred enough not to expect me to seek him more 
than he seeks me. Money is an exceedingly con- 
venient thing for its convenient uses, and an ex- 
ceedingly important thing for its better uses, in sub- 
serving the highest development of a people in right 
culture and true well-being. But the mere pos- 
session of it is not the only nor the highest respec- 
tability. There are some otherwise very estimable 
men and desirable acquaintances, who have, more or 
less, the weakness of thinking their riches entitle 
them to be sought more than they seek you — who 
will give you a general invitation to come and see 
them, when civility and propriety require them to 
come and see you first. With such persons — no 
matter, as to the rest, how clever and agreeable 
they may be — I make it a point the acquaintance 
shall go upon the footing of a perfectly reciprocal 
give and take. If they can do without me on that 
footing, I can do without them. It is not because 
I am exacting in my nature ; with old friends, or 
those whom I know to be exempt from the weakness 
I have mentioned, I am not the least in the world 
disposed to stand upon the punctilio of strict social 
gif-gaf. But as I think there are some things bet- 
ter than mere money, and of indispensable impor- 



AT GREYSTONES. 287 

tance to the commonwealth — without which indeed 
no people, however rich, can advance to the high- 
est social state — so I think the dignity and worth 
of those interests should never be compromised by 
unseemly subservience to what is merely external 
and material — especially in a country like this, 
where there is a tendency to the over-estimation of 
the dignity of dollars, not checked or countervailed, 
as in England, by established ranks and other pow- 
erful social influences not based upon mere money. 

" This reminds me of a passage I was reading 
to-day in an Academic discourse, published many 
years ago by Dr. Henry. Here it is. Let me read 
it to you : 

" c Throughout the country the great majority 
of the people have a profound reverence for nothing 
but money. Public office is a partial exception. 
Why should it be otherwise ? They see nothing 
else so powerful. Riches not only secure the mate- 
rial ends of life — its pleasures and luxuries, but they 
open the way to all the less material objects of man's 
desire — respect and observance, authority and in- 
fluence. 

cu In the mean time the tone of society is de- 
based. The luxury of mere riches is always a vul- 
gar luxury. It is external and devoid of good 



288 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

taste. It always goeth about feeling its purse. It 
counteth the fitness and propriety of its appoint- 
ments, by the sum they cost. It calleth your at- 
tention to its glittering equipage, and saith it ought 
to be of the first style, for it cost the highest price. 
It receiveth you to its grand saloons, and wisheth 
you to mark its furniture. It inviteth you to its 
table, and biddeth you note the richness of its plate, 
and telleth you the price of its wines. The fashion 
of mere riches is also a vulgar fashion. The but- 
terfly insignificance of its life is not even adorned 
by the graceful fluttering of its golden wings. It 
is quite possible to have the extravagance and fri- 
volity of fashionable life, without the ease and 
grace, the charms of wit and spirit, and the ele- 
gance of mind and manners, that in other countries 
often adorn its real nothingness, or cover up the 
coarse workings of jealousy and pretension. 

" c Such must always be the tendency of things, 
where the commercial spirit acquires an undue pre- 
dominance — where the excessive and exclusive re- 
spect for money is not repressed by appropriate 
counterchecks. In some countries these checks to 
the overgrowth of the commercial spirit are sought 
in venerable institutions of religion and letters, in 
habits of respect for established rank, and above 



AT GRETSTONES. 289 

all, by throwing a considerable portion of the prop- 
erty into such a train of transmission, as that it 
becomes the appendage and ornament of something 
that appeals to the higher sentiments, something 
that is held in greater respect than mere riches, 
and with the possession of which are connected dig- 
nified trusts, a high education, and the culture and 
habit of all lofty and generous sentiments. This is 
unquestionably the idea lying at the ground of the 
English aristocracy in the English constitution. 
Hence inalienable estates, belonging not to the 
man, but to the dignity ; where the wealth is de- 
signed to be only the means of sustaining and 
adorning the dignity, of fulfilling its proper trusts, 
and of upholding those high interests of the coun- 
try, of which the possessor of the dignity is but 
the representative ; and where habits of education, 
from generation to generation, are designed to teach 
and impress the value of many other things above 
mere riches, and to connect with the possession and 
use of them honorable sentiments, liberal culture, 
and the disposition to respect and promote the cul- 
tivation of high science and letters, and all the 
more spiritual elements of social well-being. And 
strong as are our prejudices in this country, it may 

at least be questioned, whether a fair estimate of 
13 



290 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

the evils on both sides, would not show that such 
an aristocracy is in many respects preferable to the 
aristocracy of new riches, where the elements of so- 
ciety are in perpetual fluctuation, where the coarse 
pretensions of lucky speculators, and the vulgar 
struggles of all to get up, leave little room for the 
feeling of repose and respect/ 

" I don't quite agree," continued Dr. Oldham, 
" with every expression in this passage. I think 
the people of this country have an inordinate re- 
spect for public office-as well as for money ; and it 
seems to me there is a greater respect for high sci- 
ence, art and letters, than there was twenty years 
ago, when this discourse was written. Still there 
is a great deal of truth in it. 

" It is amusing, for instance, to see the working 
of fashionable exclusiveness in the society among 
us, that rests upon commercial wealth. By the 
yard, by the piece, by the bale, by the cargo, are 
distinctions of great moment in the New York 
world of fashion. The wives and daughters of the 
man that sells by the cargo, turn up their noses at 
the wives and daughters of the man that sells by 
the bale, and never even think of the wives and 
daughters of the lesser sellers as belonging in any 
way to society — though the great world of London 



AT GKEYSTONES. 291 

would laugh at the distinction, and exclude them 
all alike, and every thing else connected with trade, 
except now and then in the case of a great banker, 
iron-master, mill-owner, or the like, who, besides 
being rich, had shown superior abilities, and won a 
distinguished position in the political world, or in 
some other sphere of public service. 

"The lower strata in New York may, however, 
work up and crop out — as the geologists say. Al- 
derman Gubbins has done so ; or rather Mrs. Gub- 
bins and the daughters have. Gubbins began life 
as a small grocer in Fulton street — his family liv- 
ing over his shop ; but he was shrewd, frugal and 
lucky, and in a few years removed his business to 
South street, where he made an immense fortune 
by heavy transactions in coffee, rum, sugar, and 
the like. 

" Gubbins is a coarse, sensual man, fond of 
good eating and drinking ; beyond that he has a 
supreme contempt for every thing but money. But 
his wife is clever, and very ambitious for herself and 
for her daughters. So Gubbins has built a great 
house in Fifth Avenue, with no end of fine furni- 
ture and gorgeous upholstery within, and his wife 
has pushed her way to a place in the upper world 
of fashion, by giving costly entertainments to its 



292 DOCTOKOLDHAM 

denizens, plenty of whom will go to criticize, to 
dance with each other, to devour truffle pies, and 
drink dubbins' unquestionable hock and cham- 
pagne. Mrs. McFlimsey of Madison square may 
be seen there, and her daughter Flora, although 
Mrs. McFlimsey declares she cannot help feeling 
awkward when she remembers — as she well does — 
the shop in Fulton street. But then Mrs. Bullion 
goes, and Mrs. Diamond — and what is she to do ? 

"Hardhead Bullion — c worth his millions/ as 
they say on 'Change — is of a different cast from 
Gubbins. He values money neither for itself nor 
for the luxuries it buys, so far as his own enjoy- 
ment of them is concerned, but for the deference 
and observance it secures. He is a proud man, not 
unconscious of the superior respect which cultivated 
persons have for high intellectual faculties and 
achievements above mere money ; and he takes 
pleasure in making sumptuous dinners, and inviting 
men eminent in art or letters along with rich men 
of his own kidney, bestowing exclusively upon the 
latter his special attention and civilities, and main- 
taining the conversation upon such matters as suit 
their intelligence and capacity of being interested, 
and putting the former into the false position of si- 
lence, or of following his lead, and playing second 



AT GREYSTONES. 293 

to men not so much intrinsically entitled to defer- 
ence, perhaps, as the butler behind his chair. It 
gratifies his pride. But those who have any proper 
self-respect are never caught the second time ; 
though I am ashamed to say there are always some 
persons of fine parts and true genius, who are con- 
tent to be his satellites and dry nurses to his pride? 
and to that of those who estimate the worth of a 
man by the number of dollars he has, or is supposed 
to have. What a significant and humiliating token, 
by the way, of the vulgarizing and morally deterio- 
rating effect of the social predominance of mere 
money, is such a use of that word, Worth ! that 
good old Saxon term, framed originally to express 
the intrinsic dignity, the spiritual nobleness of man. 
" Bob Slender is of another type. He is a vain 
man ; and when he had built up his fortune to the 
height he was satisfied with, he began to cast about 
to acquire social distinction outside Wall Street and 
the Board of Brokers. He had a certain conceit 
of his taste in matters of Art, so he built himself a 
handsome house, with a large library and a spacious 
sky-lighted picture gallery, and set up as a patron 
of American Art — sparing no pains to make his 
house an agreeable point of reunion to eminent art- 
ists, celebrated poets, and distinguished men of let- 



294 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

ters, cultivating them with much assiduity, and 
thereby securing a certain distinction to himself, in 
the way most agreeable to his vanity ; and being a 
really good-natured fellow, with a genuine respect 
for the distinction which intellectual eminence con- 
fers he has succeeded in establishing quite intimate 
relations with nearly all good-natured men among 
those whose society he cultivates. 

" But Stockj ob Pile is a very different sort of man 
from either Gubbins, or Bullion, or Slender. He 
piques himself upon his white hands, faultless linen, 
well fancied neck-tie, nicely fitting gloves and boots, 
correct hat, well-chosen vests and other garments, 
jewelry and ornaments genuine and in no excess : — 
in short, he is the model of a well-dressed man. 
He speaks respectable English, but knows nothing 
outside the sphere of his c operations/ except what 
he gets from one or two daily newspapers, from the 
current talk 'down town/ and from the { up town' 
gossip of the society he lives in, calling itself fash- 
ionable, composed for the most part of persons of 
the same sort with himself, and based upon the os- 
tentatious expenditure of money. 

" But Mr. Stockj ob Pile, though excessively 
genteel, is not a gentleman. 

" I will tell you how I came to know it. I 



AT GEEYSTONES. 295 

have no acquaintance with him, though I know him 
by sight. I was in town the other day, and got 
into one of the cars running down Sixth Avenue. 
The old way of collecting the fare, by a conductor 
passing through, had just been changed, and pas- 
sengers were expected, immediately on entering the 
car, to deposit their fivepences in a box placed at 
the head of the car, under a printed placard ad- 
vising them of the new way, and informing them 
that the driver had instructions to receive from 
such as could not make the exact amount, any 
larger coin or note, and return to them the full 
sum in such c change ' as would enable them to make 
the proper deposit in the box. Yery soon after I 
got in, a person entered and took a seat by my side. 
Apparently uninformed of the change, and not no- 
ticing the placard, he paid no heed to the driver's 
raps on the door to remind him. I pointed his at- 
tention to the directions. He cast his eyes on them, 
thanked me, and made his deposit. 

" Presently Mr. Stockjob Pile came in and 
took a seat opposite to us. He was dressed in a 
very distinguished but perfectly correct morning 
costume. He did not comply with the new direc- 
tions, and sat regardless of the driver's admonitory 
raps. Presuming him ignorant of the change, the 



296 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

man at my side politely pointed his attention to 
the placard. Stockjob looked in the direction, then 
bending his eyes upon the man, said, in a supercil- 
ious tone : ' I learned to read some time ago/ ' So 
did 1/ replied the man, e but I was none the less 
obliged to this gentleman for his politeness in point- 
ing me to that new rule. But I beg your pardon, 
sir.'" 

" What did Mr. Pile say in reply ? " asked 
Mrs. Oldham. 

" Nothing/' answered the Doctor ; " but I said 
something to the man by my side, in an undertone, 
which yet, I am afraid, reached Mr. Stockjob Pile's 
ears. I did not look at him, but I noticed imme- 
diately a mild smile on the face of a very bright 
looking young lady directly opposite me." 

u "What was it you said ? " 

" It takes something inside to make a gentle- 



AT GREYSTONES. 297 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

ABOUT CASPAR TUBEROSE AND HIS WIFE — WITH OTHER THINGS TOUCH- 
ING THE CONSTITUTION OF A GENTLEMAN. 

"But what is it that makes a gentleman ? " asked 
Mrs. Oldham. 

" I'll tell you first who is a gentleman. He is a 
man you know — that florist that has his conserva- 
tory at the upper end of Madison street." 

" What, Tuberose ? " 

" Yes, Caspar Tuberose." 

" Who comes to church every Sunday, with that 
grotesque little figure of a wife hanging on his 
arm ? " 

" The same. She is crazed, poor thing ! Tu- 
berose went to England some fifteen years ago or 
more, and returned bringing her with him. She 
was young, and I dare say very pretty, when he 
13* 



298 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

married her ; and I have always fancied there must 
have been some touch of romance in the affair. 
The fright of the voyage, or some peril at sea, I am 
told, gave her nerves such a shock, that it unset- 
tled her brain, and she has never been rightly her- 
self since, though always harmless, I believe." 

" What a figure she makes of herself," said 
Mrs. Oldham, " coming to church — her slender 
form arrayed in a scant, slim dress, hardly coming 
down to her ankles — the little belt around her waist, 
or rather almost up to her arms — the old-fashioned 
Quaker kerchief covering her bosom, and her huge 
overshadowing bonnet ; she is the queerest sight in 
the world. Sue has two of those extraordinary bon- 
nets — one for winter and one for summer — both in 
shape like coal scuttles of the largest size, very 
flaring, projecting forward more than six inches 
beyond her forehead and face, and bedizzened with 
many-hued ribbons — a perfect quarrel of inharmo- 
nious colors, in Madge Wildfire fashion." 

" The ribbons," said the Doctor, " are, proba- 
bly, a crazy addition ; but as to the rest, the bonnets 
and the dress are of the same fashion, if not the 
very same articles, she wore when she first came 
here a new young bride ; and she cannot compre- 
nend that the fashions have changed, or perhaps the 



AT GREYSTONES. 299 

memory of the pleasure she then felt in her array, 
still clings so vividly to her shattered mind, that 
she cannot imagine any thing else so fit and so 
fine." 

" Well, about Tuberose, husband ? " 
" He, you observe, is the pink of nicety and 
neatness. He comes to church dressed with the 
greatest propriety, and in the mode of the day, 
with a delicate little nosegay in his button-hole. 
His whole presence is instinct with precision and de- 
corum, a sense of the proper and the fit. He is 
perfectly aware of the grotesque appearance of his 
wife, and of the ridicule it is fitted to provoke in 
the coarse or the thoughtless. He is just the man 
to have the keenest sensibility to the contrast be- 
tween himself and her, and the spectacle they make 
together. Yet you see not a trace of it in his face 
or manner, as he goes to church with her — no false 
shame, no mortified vanity, no neglect or coldness 
to her — not a particle of mean feeling or behavior ; 
on the contrary, he gives her his arm with as much 
deference as if she were the most correctly dressed 
duchess in his native land — more than this, with, an 
air of protecting reverence that represses a]l ridi- 
cule, and commands respect for her from everybody 
that sees them, as he conducts her along the street, 



300 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

sits beside her at church, and goes with her to the 
chancel rai] on communion Sundays. 

" That little florist, I say, has that something 
inside which it takes to make a gentleman — the 
very quintessential internal quality of one, which 
Mr. Stockjob Pile has nothing of. Could Stockjob 
behave as Tuberose does in like circumstances 1 
No, he cannot even respect such behavior. 

" I declare I wish I had a sketch of Tuberose 
and his wife coming to church arm in arm — such as 
Wilkie would have made. I would give it the 
place of honor there, under Ary Sheffer's Christ the 
Consoler." 

" But, husband, you don't give me your defini- 
tion of a gentleman/' 

"It is not the easiest thing in the world to do, 
my dear ; so many elements enter into the meaning 
of the term in its fullest comprehension. It takes, 
indeed, as I said, something inside to make a gen- 
tleman, but it takes also something outside. Over 
and above the essential internal qualities — princi- 
ples, sentiments, impulses — there is also included 
in the proper idea of one, a certain degree of pro- 
priety and refinement in speech and manners. A 
man may have the air and manner of a gentleman 
without the spirit of one, like Stockjob Pile ; though 



AT GREYSTONES. 301 

where the spirit is wanting, the hollow outside will 
seldom impose for any length of time upon a 
tolerably acute observer. And on the other hand, 
although a man cannot have the true internal spirit, 
but it will of course find expression outwardly in 
some form — not only in the matter of his speech 
and conduct, but also to some extent even in the 
manner of it — there may still be a lack of those 
external requisites, derived from breeding and cul- 
ture, which we commonly and properly include 
in the idea of one who is completely a gentleman. 
Then, again, a person may have the true spirit of a 
gentleman, and also the manners of one in a degree 
to entitle him to the appellation, and yet he may, 
in various degrees, fall short of possessing those 
requisites, partly internal and partly acquired — the 
delicate deference, nice tact, simple ease, and the 
exquisite grace, and courtesy — which constitute the 
inexplicable charm of the thorough-bred and perfect 
gentleman in the highest idea of the term." 

" But about those essential internal qualities/' 
said Mr*. Oldham, " what do you say they are ? " 

" Well, nobility of soul, honor, and the courage 
to do right, respect for God's image in every human 
soul, respect for every thing intrinsically respecta- 
ble, and delicacy, gentleness, and kindness of spirit. 



302 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

These, I judge Tuberose to have — lie is, therefore, 
in essence a true gentleman, though he is by no 
means perfect in some of the more external requi- 
sites for a finished one ; yet, I dare say Stockjob 
Pile — who thinks bulling, bearing, cornering and 
shaving in Wall street, more respectable employ- 
ments than flower-growing — would smile a supercil- 
ious smile to hear him called a gentleman in any 
way, because he has no idea of the necessity of any 
thing inside, but only a certain external position 
and a certain correct style of dress and manners. 

" Honor ! What a great word, in the right 
worthy acceptation of it ! What a world o£ill-un- 
derstood meaning in it ! With multitudes, honor 
is considered in the merest external way — birth, 
rank, office, or whatever is valued and praised by 
the world at large or by the set one belongs to, 
whatever confers reputation or distinction in the 
opinion of others. The desire for this sort of honor 
may exist without the least desire to merit what it 
seeks for : to gain it, is all that is cared for. This 
is mere ambition — and in men of great force of 
mind and will, may go to the extent of a passion — 
grasping for power, place, or whatever gives promi- 
nence and credit in the world — working, in all the 
exploits it prompts to, not for the cause of truth or 



AT GREYSTONES. 303 

the public good as its motive (even though it may- 
seek to advance them), but for its own aggrandize- 
ment, and so engendering, it may be, or tempting 
to hatred, envy, and all vices and crimes, to com- 
pass its end. 

" But true honor is not anything merely exter- 
nal — neither what a man is in outward position by 
accident of birth or fortune, nor what he outwardly 
acquires. No true honor attaches to the cowardly 
incapable descendant of the longest line of brave 
and able ancestors — no true nobleness to the mean 
souled son of a noble father; neither to him who 
by base acts, or by any acts and doings of his own, 
or by any chance of fortune, acquires a reputation 
he does not deserve, or a station he is unfit to fill. 

" Honor is something internal as well as exter- 
nal. It relates to a man's own notion of what is 
honorable in itself — to his own sense of what is 
binding upon him. True honor falls within this 
sphere. But within it also falls a great deal that 
is fantastic and false. 

" How many men feel no shame, for instance, 
in being known as seducers of female virtue, and 
will not scruple at the basest lying to rob a loving 
and confiding woman of all that makes life worth 
having — and yet call themselves gentlemen and 



304 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

men of honor, and are so held by such as have the 
same notions of honor as themselves. Such an one 
does not count his honor sullied by doing the base 
thing ; but tell him to his face that he is a base 
liar, and he will think nothing but your blood can 
wipe out the stain ! Such a man's honor falls un- 
der the same head as the proverbial honor among 
thieves — only it is not so respectable as the thief's 
sense of obligation to hold truth and good faith to 
his fellows. It falls even below the moral standard 
of Bob Acres' servant (I believe it is) in the play : 
' he had no objection to lie for his master, but it 
hurt his conscience terribly to be found out ! ' It 
does not hurt your seducer's honor to have his ly- 
ing found out, but only to have the plain true 
English for it spoken out ! 

" But how different from all this is true honor, 
which lies not in opinion, not in the breath of others, 
nor in any thing not essentially moral. Its con- 
tents are truth, sincerity, good faith, probity, mag- 
nanimity, generosity of spirit, the courage to do 
right, and the strict discharge of all duties. The 
man who takes these into the sphere of his concep- 
tion of honor, and puts his honor in them — is them 
and acts them — he is the man of true honor, with 
the sense of honor of a true gentleman. He can- 



AT GREYSTONES. 305 

not lie, break faith, nor knowingly do wrong. He 
will not be guilty of any mean or base behavior, 
even when alone, with no eye to see him. He will 
never take credit when he does not deserve it, nor 
for any noble act he has not performed. Neither 
gold can buy, nor wild horses drag him from the 
path of right. The very suggestion of selling him- 
self to a wrong, mean, base thing, c touches his 
honor/ He repels it with indignant scorn. ' Sir/ 
said my friend Henry Reed's noble grandfather, 
when the British emissary sought to bribe him to 
the Royal cause, c Sir, I am very poor, but your 
king is not rich enough to buy me/ This scorn, 
with which the true gentleman repels all attempts 
upon his honor, is sometimes called pride ; but it 
is not properly pride — not mere self-esteem and 
self-importance, generally arrogant, and sometimes 
supercilious, winch demands homage from all, would 
make all humble themselves and think themselves 
nothing in its presence. It is merely the feeling 
of disdain and disgust at what is base, and that 
erectness of spirit which must accompany the con- 
sciousness of one who feels that his honor has no 
price. Yet this lofty self-respect is not so much a 
mere opinion of his own merits, as a homage to 
that in which he places honor ; and so the true 



306 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

gentleman has an equal respect for everything re- 
spectable in others. There is no jealousy, envy, or 
spirit of detraction in him. Modest in speaking of 
himself, he speaks frankly, fully, gladly in praise of 
others' nobleness. 

" This is the honor of a true gentleman. I was 
pleased to light the other day upon an anecdote of 
the late Gouverneur Morris, who is said to have 
been as true a gentleman as ever breathed. When 
asked for his definition of a gentleman, he replied 
by reciting some old version (I don't know whose) 
of the Fifteenth Psalm : 

'Tis he whose every thought and deed 

By rule of virtue moves, 
Whose generous tongue disdains to speak 

The thing his heart disproves ; 

Who never did a slander forge 

His neighbor's fame to wound, 
Nor hearken to a false report 

By malice whispered round. 

Who vice in all its pomp and power 

Can treat with just neglect, 
And piety, though clothed in rags, 

Religiously respect. 

Who to his plighted word and truth 

Has ever firmly stood, 
And though he promise to his loss, 

He makes his promise good. 



AT GREYSTONES. 307 

Whose soul in usury disdains 

His treasures to employ ; 
Whom no rewards can ever bribe 

The guiltless to destroy. 

" It is said also that Jefferson copied these 
verses into a common-place book, he was in the 
habit of constantly consulting. Both Morris and 
Jefferson had, you see, the true notion of the honor 
of a gentleman, even if they did not always come 
up to it in their conduct — and I certainly do not 
mean to say they did not. 

" In contrast with this, look at Falstaff — the 
perfect incarnation of a base soul — not the least 
sense of true honor. He has no notion even of 
any thing but mere external honor lying in the 
opinion of others ; and he does not value this for 
itself, but only as the means of gratifying his low, 
base appetites. For this he values it, and is willing 
to do all mean, lying and abominable things ; 
though when it comes to the point of facing death 
or damage to his filthy carcass, honor becomes c a 
word ' — ' air ' — c a mere scutcheon/ and e he'll none 
of it.' Hear him on the battle-field of Shrewsbury 
— where he skulks about intent only on his own 
safety — as he comes upon the dead body of Sir 
Walter Blunt : ' There's honor for you ; here's no 



308 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

vanity I like not such grinning honor 

as Sir Walter hath : give me life ; which if I can 
save, so ; if not, honor comes unlooked for, and 
there's an end/ Hear him, too, after saving his 
life by feigning to fall dead, as he rises and stands 
over the body of Hotspur, just slain by Prince 
Henry : c The better part of valor is discretion, by 
which I have saved my life. Zounds ! I am afraid 
of this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead. 
How if he should counterfeit, too, and rise ? By 
my faith, I am afraid he would prove the better 
counterfeit. Therefore I'll make him sure ; yea, 
and 111 swear I killed him. Why may not he rise, 
as well as I ? Nothing confutes me but eyes, and 
nobody sees me : therefore, sirrah, with a new 
wound in your thigh come you along with me/ 
And so lost to shame that he faces the Prince with 
his lie, though he knew the Prince believed him 
not. 

" But besides this sense of noble honor, the true 
gentleman, as he respects himself, so he respects 
his fellow-men and God's image in them all. His 
impulses toward them are delicate and considerate, 
prompting him to gentle thoughts and kind judg- 
ments. And these sentiments show themselves in 



AT GREYSTONES. 309 

his speech, tone, and manner. No gentleman is 
arrogant, or supercilious toward others, especially 
toward his inferiors in position. Nor, on the other 
hand, will you ever see in him any thing of that 
offensive condescension, nor that peculiar tone and 
manner towards them, which constantly and un- 
pleasantly makes them feel that one thinks them 
beneath him, and is civil or polite rather out of regard 
to what is due to himself, than what is due to them. 
This is a great touchstone of a true gentleman. 
In fine, no true gentleman will ever deliberately, 
wantonly, or needlessly, wound the feelings of oth- 
ers, trample on their self-respect or self-love, nor in 
any way discompose them, put them out of counte- 
nance, or make them ill at ease. 

" What a fine portrait of a gentleman is Bul- 
wer's Captain Eoland De Caxton ! Some one has 
given a select list of books for a gentleman's libra- 
ry. Now a gentleman may read much or little — 
he may be a man of many books, or of one. He 
may, or he may not be, accomplished in letters, 
learning, art, science. All this is incidental. Cap- 
tain Eoland reads nothing but his Bible and Frois- 
sart's Chronicle. But what a soul of honor ! 
What disdain of every thing wrong, base, mean ! 
What delicate respect and deference for others ! 



310 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

Do you recollect his attempt to get out of the hall- 
door, where the house-maid was scrubbing the 
stones ? I must read it to you. Here it is, in the 
Caxton's — that best and most charming of all Bul- 
wer's novels, as I think. It is Pisistratus tells the 
story : 

" Entering the hall, I discovered my uncle Ko- 
land in a state of great embarrassment. The maid- 
servant was scrubbing the stones at the hall door ; 
she was naturally plump, and it is astonishing how 
much more plump a female becomes when she is 
on all fours ! The maid-servant then was scrub- 
bing the stones, her face turned from the Captain, 
and the Captain, evidently meditating a sortie, stood 
ruefully gazing at the obstacle before him, and 
hemming aloud. Alas ! the maid-servant was deaf ! 
I stopped, curious to see how uncle Eoland would 
extricate himself from the dilemma. 

" Finding that his hems were in vain, my uncle 
made himself as small as he could, and glided close to 
the left of the wall ; at that instant the maid turned 
round toward the right, and completely obstructed, 
by this manoeuvre, the slight crevice through which 
hope had dawned on her captive. My uncle stood 
stock-still, and, to say the truth, he could not have 



AT GREYSTONES. 311 

stirred an inch without coming into personal con- 
tact with the rounded charms which blockaded 
his movements. My uncle took off his hat, and 
scratched his forehead in great perplexity. Pres- 
ently, by a slight turn of the flanks, the opposing 
party, while leaving him the opportunity of return, 
entirely precluded all chance of egress in that quar- 
ter. My uncle retreated in haste, and now pre- 
sented himself on the right wing of the enemy. 
He had scarcely done so, when, without looking 
behind her, the blockading party shoved aside the 
pail, that crippled the range of her operations, and 
so placed it that it formed a formidable barrier, 
which my uncle's cork leg had no chance of sur- 
mounting. Therewith Captain Koland lifted his 
eyes appealingly to heaven, and I heard him dis- 
tinctly ejaculate — 

" c Would to God she were a creature in 
breeches ! ' 

"But happily at this moment the maid-ser- 
vant turned her head sharply round, and seeing the 
Captain, rose in an instant, moved away the pail, 
and dropped a frightened courtesy. 

"My uncle Koland touched his hat. 'I beg 
you a thousand pardons, my good girl/ said he ; 
and, with a half bow, [ f proper, my dear, to a mili- 



312 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

tary man/ said the Doctor] he slid into the open 
air. 

" ' You have a soldier's politeness, uncle/ said 
I, tucking my arm into Captain Roland's. 

" c Tush, my boy/ said he, smiling seriously, 
and coloring up to the temples ; i tush ; say a gen- 
tleman's ! To us, sir, every woman is a lady, in 
right of her sex.' 

" There, my dear, is not that exquisite ? " 
"A beautiful picture!" said Mrs. Oldham. 
" I wish it could be painted." 

" Something of it might be expressed by form 
and color," replied the Doctor, " but nothing but 
word-picturing can tell the whole ; and how charm- 
ingly Bulwer has portrayed the scene. That Cap- 
tain Roland had some crotchets about birth and 
blood, which he carried to a degree of extravagance, 
but he had the complete inside of as noble a gen- 
tleman as ever drew breath. 

"As to what goes to make up both the inside 
and outside of a thorough 'gentleman, I have said 
there are several things in the matter of tact, ease, 
polish — partly natural and partly of breeding — 
which may exist in various degrees, all the way up 



AT GKEYSTONES. 313 

to the very height and accomplishment of ideal per- 
fection. 

" The politeness of the thorough-bred gentle- 
man, may be more or less precise and formal, ac- 
cording to age, country, or custom, but always 
there is in it a sincere naturalness, which has the 
effect of never seeming overmuch or oppressive. 
To make other persons blocks or frames, on which 
to hang out the finery of one's own manners — as 
some do — is essentially a vulgar vanity. There 
goes two to the success of such an attempt, and a 
well-bred man of the world knows how to put a 
stop to it ; though for myself, when any one tries 
it on me, I generally knock under with an air of 
pleased and edified submission. 

" We include in the idea of a perfectly well- 
bred gentleman, a certain cosmopolitan freedom 
from the provincialism or cockneyism which is 
generated by a narrow sphere, a limited knowledge 
of the world, or by the influence of trade or other 
special callings. We look also for an easy simplici- 
ty and purity of language ; though as to the rest, 
the thorough-bred man may talk much or little, 
with more or less vivacity and earnestness, and 
more or less gesticulation. This is matter of na- 
tion, race, or individual temperament. An Eng- 
14 



314 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

lishnian, a Frenchman, and a Spaniard may differ 
very greatly from each other in these respects, and 
yet be equally thorough-bred. 

" The absence of egotism, or making one's self 
the centre of all interest, is implied in the feeling 
and just taste of a true gentleman. As a general 
rule, the well-bred man will not talk much of him- 
self, his own sentiments, feelings and doings — es- 
pecially in general society ; but not always does 
the abundant expression of one's own sentiments, 
and the ever-so-frequent use of the first person, 
indicate any essential egotism. In the late Chan- 
cellor it was merely the frank outpouring 

of the exuberant fulness of a rich mind, taking the 
most direct and natural course. You could see he 
was not thinking of himself ; he was so absorbed 
in the interest and feeling of the subject, that he 
was unconscious of any thing else. I never, for a 
moment, thought of him as an egotist ; though I 
have often thought so of men who rarely used the 
first person, or spoke of themselves directly, yet the 
thought of themselves and the display of them- 
selves was at the bottom of all they said, veiled, 
but not concealed, by the adroitest tact of a prac- 
tised man of the world. 

" Another thing in relation to a gentleman's 



AT GREYS TONES. 315 

bearing and way of speaking. I have often been 
amused to observe, both here and in England, a 
foolish affectation — foolish because an affectation — 
of extreme quietness in speech and manner, a stud- 
ied avoidance of strong or energetic expression — as 
if the reverse of wrong were the only right thing, 
or as if there were something intrinsically fine or of 
superior tone in never having, or in never giving 
full or earnest 'expression to, any sentiment or emo- 
tion, as admiration, or the like. l Nice, 'pon hon- 
or/ said the English dandy, eyeing Niagara for a 
moment through his glass. c Pretty good/ returned 
his fellow dandy, dropping his eye-glass, after an 
equally brief glance. 

" Some dull, heavy-minded persons, but very 
proud withal, and conscious of being unable to 
shine, or display themselves to advantage in con- 
versation, take refuge in this unimpressible apathy, 
as the only ground they can stand upon. They are 
like bears — as some one, Coleridge, I believe it is, 
says — that live by sucking the paws of their own 
self-importance. But mostly it is an affectation 
springing from vanity ; and though some really 
clever persons, who might be very agreeable, are 
misled by it, yet more commonly it is the folly of 
such as cannot say any thing better than soft insi- 



316 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

pidities ; and so society is the gainer by their af- 
fectation. 

" The thorough gentleman understands that in 
the intercourse of well-bred society, all its mem- 
bers stand on equal footing. He is never troubled 
with any fear of compromising himself by speaking 
to the wrong person — a snobbishness very common 
in our American society. He is not — like Bank- 
field — always on the watch to exploit himself (as 
the French say) with the most distinguished per- 
sons present, carefully avoiding all others, and 
scantly civil to them if addressed. He may talk 
more and more familiarly, perhaps, with those he 
knows best, or finds most agreeable ; but he treats 
all with equal respect and courtesy. 

" Courtesy ! That is another word of fine im- 
port, second only to honor in the idea of a thorough 
gentleman. No two words together, perhaps, go 
so nearly to express the idea. Courtesy implies 
something outward in manner ; yet a merely formal 
courtesy, springing (it may be) from fastidious 
pride, or from polished selfishness, is held of little 
worth. Its hollowness is instinctively felt by every 
finely strung heart. It gives no pleasure and con- 
ciliates no regard, but awakens only displeasure and 
dislike. Genuine courtesy i3 that which is ani- 



AT GKEYSTONES. 317 

mated by a gentle and kindly spirit — which," as it 
comes from the heart, so it always goes to the 
heart. But, on the other hand, although a gentle 
spirit will prompt a gentle manner, as well as gen- 
tle thoughts and" judgments towards our fellow- 
men, and although a kindly heart will prompt kind 
words and a kind voice, yet these two together do 
not make up what we understand by the word cour- 
tesy. True courtesy is, in its idea, the perfect out- 
ward form of the gentle and kindly spirit — the 
flower and aroma that springs from those twin 
roots. Not all gentle and kindly persons can be 
properly called courteous. The spirit may be there, 
but not the form. Where these are united, there 
is complete and perfect courtesy — one of the most 
graceful and gracious, lovely and winning things 
that delight human eyes, and charm human hearts/' 



318 DOCTOR OLDHAM 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

THE DOCTOR'S HORSE — WHAT AND WHY ABOUT HIM. 

The Doctor has a saddle-horse, and takes a daily 
ride. But unlike Doctor Daniel Dove's immortal 
horse Nobs, there is nothing extraordinary in the 
story of the parentage and birth of Doctor Old- 
ham's Dick — that is to say, nothing so far as the 
Doctor is aware. All that he knows about him is 
that he first drew the vital air on the plains of 
Mexico ; and this is a matter of credible tradition 
— confirmed by Dick's looks and habits, rather 
than of the Doctor's own knowledge. Fred tried atr 
first to get him registered in the family vocabulary 
as Bichard Lionheart, but finally acceded to thl 
designation of Kichard Mustang, as having refer- 
ence to his country and his race, which name Phil 
maliciously prolongs to " Richard Mustang Lini- 



i 



AT GREYSTONES. 319 

ment/' to the great disgust of Fred ; and the Doc- 
tor often shortens to " Dick Musty/' to Fred's 
scarcely less displeasure. 

It may be that if Dick's story could be known, 
the faithful record would be as extraordinary and 
romantic, and as trying to the modesty of Miss 
Prim, as the story of Nob's parentage was to the Di- 
rectresses of the Book Club that insisted on extract- 
ing the offending chapter — by a scissorsean opera- 
tion — before Southey's book was allowed to go its 
village round. But Miss Prim's propriety will not 
be shocked by any thing I have to recount concerning 
Dick's father and mother, for it is not known who 
his parents were, and so I could not set down any 
thing about their behavior, in a strict historical 
way, but only quite generally, as matter of neces- 
sary inference. There is ample scope, indeed, in 
the absence of known facts — and the greater from 
the entire absence of them — for acute and erudite 
conjecture of things neither impossible nor improb- 
• able, which I might put together with such art and 
skill, as to make them pass for true ; as many bi- 
ographers supply the lack of known events in the 
early days of distinguished men, or as some cele- 
brated historians illuminate a dark period in the 
listory of the human race. 



320 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

But I have a reverence for historical truth, even 
in the pedigree of a horse, and as I know nothing 
of Dick's, I say nothing. Indeed, if I knew ever 
so much, it would not be pertinent to my purpose 
to recount it ; for I have introduced Dick not for 
his own sake, but because Dick's ways and his mas- 
ter's ways together, are now and then the cause of 
odd mishaps, one of which connected itself in the 
Doctor's mind with another horse, which was con- 
nected with a calamity that was connected with 
the greatest blessing of the Doctor's life, as he 
justly regards the. occasion that led to his gaining 
the greatest earthly treasure, a good wife. But for 
Dick, it is quite possible I might never have learned 
the story of that calamity, but for which there 
would have been no Doctor and His Wife ; and so 
this immortal book would never have seen the 
light. 

There is a great deal more in things than some 
people think. 



AT GBEYS TONES. 321 



CHAPTEE XXXIII. 

ALL-HANG-TOGETHER-> T ESS. 

Thoughtful Header ! Did it ever occur to you 
to think the thought I would suggest by the word 
I have placed above ? If you have ever perpended 
it deeply and long, I need not tell you it is some- 
thing to bewilder the mind in the attempt to grasp 
and follow it. 

What a storehouse is the mind of man ! filled 
with images of every thing we get by our senses, 
and with ideas, thoughts, feelings, in the intellec- 
tual and moral sphere, and all of them, images, 
thoughts, feelings, married to words that more or 
less clearly and vividly represent and reproduce 
them. A storehouse of what capacity ! made to 

contain the experiences of Eternity, where nothing 
14* 



322 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

once deposited is ever lost — many things gone 
perhaps from the present memory of the moment, 
but there, and may be recalled. A brain fever 
may quicken what has slept in the mind a long 
lifetime — as seen in those Pennsylvania Swedes 
that Kush (I believe) tells us of, praying on their 
death-beds, in their mother tongue, the little prayers 
of their childhood — prayers and a tongue gone from 
their recollection for threescore years or more. 

The records of a whole life are rendered up to 
memory in a moment, in the case of drowning men 
— as recovered persons say. 

"What may not death do for us all ? 

It is astounding to consider the universe con- 
centrated in the unity of a single consciousness. 
But for this unity of consciousness, nothing in the 
storehouse of the mind could be said to be truly 
there. Yet what an unspeakable chaos would this 
storehouse be, what useless lumber all its treasures, 
were it not for the ways by which they are con- 
nected, and through which they may be evoked. 

Most curious and wonderful is it to think how 
all things are tied and linked together, so that there 
is not one single thing — object, image, thought, 
word — but is connected with every other thing — 
object, image, thought, word — in the universe, con- 



AT GREY STONES. 323 

nected more or less nearly or remotely, and, it may 
be, in half a score of ways, by relations of cause 
and effect, substance and quality, universal and 
particular, genus and species, sameness and differ- 
ence, likeness and unlikeness, nearness or distance 
in time or place. Just as there is not a single point 
in the infinitude of space from which you cannot 
go to every other point — if not in an actual or 
practical, yet in a mathematical and theoretical 
way ; so there is not an object for the senses, nor 
an image for the fancy, nor a conception, nor a 
thought, but will carry you (if you allow it) away 
over hill and dale, across plains and rivers, to the 
topmost peaks of the highest mountains ; across 
seas and oceans to the world's end ; to the plan- 
ets ; to the utmost stars whose light has been trav- 
elling for ages toward our world, and has ages yet 
to travel before it will strike our orb ; and so on- 
ward and outward in every conceivable line of mo- 
tion, through all space and through all time. 

Behold a symbol, or rather the suggestion of 
one : 



324 



DOCTOR OLDHAM 




Now, thoughtful reader, consider — that this 
common centre may be anywhere, and consequently 
that every point in the infinitude of space may be 
the centre of such a figure lying in every plane. 

Therefore try to bring clearly before thy mind's 
eye infinitude, in the boundless height and depth 
and length and breadth of its sphere and pleni- 



AT GKEYSTONES. 325 

tude, thus diagrammed : an infinite series of con- 
centric spheres, and every point in infinitude a 
centre, with radiating lines cutting and tangents 
starting from every point in the periphery of every 
sphere. 

Thou canst not indeed get a clear image of all 
this, for the imageable infinite is a contradiction. 
When we attempt to measure the absolutely infi- 
nite, we get nothing at the greatest but the indefi- 
nitely extended finite — a mere zero of the infinite. 

I am well aware of this : I only said try ; and 
if thou triest long enough and patiently enough, 
thou wilt conceive enough and get enough of image 
to be to thee a symbol of the all-hang-tog ether- 
ness of things in the mind of man. 

To me at times much revolving this matter, it 
becomes something quite appalling to consider 
what and how much may be involved in the utter- 
ance of a single word. It matters little what one. 
Take any one at hazard out of the dictionary, from 
Abaca to Zythum — if you can tell what these 
words mean, most courteous reader, without look- 
ing them out in the dictionary, you can tell more 
than I could two minutes ago — take any word out 
of Webster's Dictionary — and it is said there are 



326 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

some fourscore thousand of them ; or any one out 
of the biographical, geographical, statistical, eco- 
nomical, or scientific dictionaries — amounting, for 
aught I know, to as many thousands, or more than as 
many thousands more — each of which words will 
stand connected, according to your knowledge, with 
all other words of all the other tongues you know — 
take any word, I say, and who can tell what a 
length of travel it may entail. It is frightful to con- 
sider how far from country, home, and friends, the 
man that utters it or hears it may be compelled to 
go. And so absolutely numberless are the roads that 
start from that single word — straight, crooked, cir- 
cling, zig-zag — with myriads of crossings and re- 
crossings, turnings and returnings, junctions and 
partings, confluences and divergences — as you con- 
ceive, by considering the diagram. 

Your course may take any direction of the com- 
pass. 

It may take any line of progress. 

I would illustrate the subject by a special dia- 
gram or two, but I should instantly remind such a 
reader as I take you to be, of Tristram Shandy's 
figure of the progress of his story, and the sugges- 
tion of that is enough for you ; as for those that 
have not seen it, let them look and see. 



AT GREYSTONES. 327 

Thoughtful Keader ! If you have meditated 
upon this matter, I need not tell you it is some- 
thing to make one's head ache, if one goes on long 
in the attempt to grasp all the possibilities of the 
problem. 

If you have not, try it. 

Take any word, and follow out your thoughts, 
setting down the single words, or the prominent 
word of any fact, scene, thought, that may be suc- 
cessively suggested. I will give you the beginning 
of an example : 

Light, 

Darkness, 

Sun, 

Stars, 

Creation, 

Moses, 

Eden, 

The Devil, 

Milton, 

Homer, 

Greece, 

Troy, 

iEneafc;, 

Italy, 



328 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

Louis Napoleon, 
The Uncle, 
St. Helena, 
Louis Philippe, 
Ups and Downs, 
Solferino, 
Viilafranca, 
Cigarettes, 
Vive la Bagatelle, 
Oxenstiern, 
Miss Bremer, 
etc., etc., etc. 

Thus you see I have been back to the beginning 
of things, and thence from country to country, from 
person to person, and from thing to thing, down to 
this day, and I might go on through all time — and 
not without reason, for every step of the way. And 
you will consider, too, that each word in this list 
might have suggested other words, and led off in 
innumerable other directions in other series of con- 
nections. At the word Darkness, for instance, it 
might have gone thus : 

Darkness, 
Lamps, 



Or thus 



at greyston.es. 329 

Buskin, 
Pre-Raphael, 
etc., etc. 



Darkness, 
Gas, 

Windbags, 
Stump Orators, 
Democracy, 
The Devil, 
etc., etc. 



At the word Stars thus 



Stars, 

Herschell, 

Cape of Good Hope, 

De Gama, 

Indies, 

Columbus, 

Americus Yespuccius, 

The way with the world, 

etc., etc. 



330 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

At the word 3Ioses thus : 

Moses, 

Pharaoh, 

Joseph, 

Mrs. Potiphar, 

Cream Cheese, 

Howadji, 

Nile, 

Pyramids, 

Bricks, 

Fugitives, 

Catch Law, 

Democracy, 

The Devil, 

etc., etc. 

At the word Troy thus : 
Troy, 
Hector, 
Mclntyre, 
Highlanders, 
Scythes, 
Preston Pans, 
Col. Gardiner, 
Pretender, 



AT GREYSTONES. 331 

Flora Mclvor, 

Waverley, 

Wizard, 

Witches, 

Salem, 

Hawthorne, 

etc., etc. 

These are the merest hints in the way of solving 
the stupendous problem, of what may come of a 
word if you engage to follow it. If I had an acre 
of parchment, instead of these tiny pages, I could 
draw you something, in the fashion of the old ge- 
nealogical trees, that might better show you what 
may spring and branch from the root and stem of a 
single word ; though that would be also the merest 
beginning of a complete exemplification. But then 
an acre of parchment might answer to suggest to 
you, thoughtful Header ! more than ten thou- 
sand square miles of it could contain. You would 
see that every word — if it have not, like every hu- 
man being, two parents, four grandparents, eight 
great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandpa- 
rents, and so on, in a geometrical series — has, nev- 
ertheless, numberless children, grandchildren, great- 
grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, and col- 



332 



DOCTOR OLDHAM 



lateral descendants, in an infinitely expanding series 
of more than geometrical proportion. 

Besides, you must consider that the progeny of 
a single word, the lines of descent, the branchings 
and offshootings, may be as various as there are 
various minds. I once tried half a dozen of my 
friends with the word Boots ; and I will give you 
the list which each one wrote down : 



II. 



III. 



Boots, 


Boots, 


Boots,- 


Shoes, 


Leather, 


Suwarrow, 


Slippers, 


Calf, 


Crimea, 


Sandals, 


Bull, 


Wellington, 


Washing, 


Wooden shoes, 


Waterloo, 


Christ, 


Mont Blanc, 


Napoleon, 


Peter, 


Supper, 


Guards, 


Judas, 


Dance, 


Irish, 


Arnold, 


Pharisees, 


Fontenoy, 


Gen. Lee, 


Hypocrisy, 


Louis XIV. : 


Geo. H. M., 


Cotton Gospel, 


etc., etc. 


N. Y. Hist. Soc. 


, etc., etc 




etc., etc. 







AT GREYSTON.ES. 



333 



IV. 



V. 



VI. 



Boots, 


Boots, 


Boots, 


English Inn, 


Bootmaker, 


Cobbler, 


" Mine ease," 


Cobbler, 


Wax, 


Falstaff, 


Waxencl, 


Twine, 


Francis, 


Backsides, 


Koses, 


" Anon, anon, 


Pumps, 


Bowery, 


sir/' 


Silk Stockings, 


Kowdy, 


Shakspeare, 


Calves, 


Lize, 


Theatre, 


Grenadiers, 


Satan, 


John Wesley, 


Wellington, 


Asmodeus, ■ 


Astor House, 


Napoleon, 


Sticks, 


Fanny Kenible, 


etc., etc. 


Gum, 


etc., etc. 




Water, 
" Foam/' 
Spitzbergen, 
etc., etc. 



In these lists the connection of the words in the 
minds of the several writers, is for the most part, 
easy enough to be seen by the intelligent reader, 
although in some cases it would seem to be owing 
to something casual and incidental. The last list 
was given me by my bright-minded young friend 
Susan Garland, from whose clever and excellent 
mother I at the same time received the one that 



334 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

stands second above. In Susan's, there is a subtle 
poetic association, linking the cobbler's twine with 
the roses that fair ringers twine ; and an equally 
subtle link connecting the maiden's rose-bower with 
the Bowery street of New York. 

But enough for the thoughtful reader ; to the 
one who does not think, more would be so much 
more thrown away. 

" Fudge ! " 

I make no doubt of it. 

" I don't see what it has to do here." 

Yery likely not. 

" But what made you bring it in here ? " 

The Doctor's horse. 

QflNHZn ZTNETOIZIN. 



AT GREYSTONES. 335 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 



LENYOY, PERHAPS. CONTAINING SOMETHING NATURAL AND ALSO 

SOMETHING SUPERNATURAL, FROM -WHICH NOTHING CAME EXCEPT 
SOME NATURAL REMARKS OF THE DOCTOR'S. 



I was sitting in ray study, going over in my 
thoughts the various sorts of good readers invoked 
by good authors, and setting down the names as 
they occurred to me : 



Courteous, 

Gentle, 

Kind, 

Candid, 

Benevolent, 

Friendly, 

Intelligent, 



336 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

Discriminating, 

Sagacious, 

Judicious, 

Learned, 

Thoughtful, 

Wise. 

I stopped, when thus far, in a musing way, 
making unconsciously on the paper the Doctor's 
favorite cypher : 




Whether the forming of the monogram acted 
in this case as a charm or spell, I know not — it 
never had any such mystic power before ; hut 
now 



Forth from the invisible vacant space 
Dimly emerged, thick clustering, half seen forms, 
Hovering and peeping through the airy veil, 
— Ever blank vacancy to unpurg'd eyes — 
And then the veil itself dissolved away, 



AT GREYSTONES. 337 

And dear familiar faces one by one 
Took form distinct, where form was none before, 
And smiles of pleasant recognition filled 
The peopled air a moment since so void. 



In short, I was surrounded by a throng of ei- 
dola, or spiritual forms of readers — a crowd of 
pleasant faces — not a disagreeable one among them, 
not a captious, or caviling, or cynical, or sneering — 
not a dull or incapable one, not even a critical one 
in the sense of one who reads merely in order to 
pass a judgment ; but every sort of good reader 
ever apostrophized by good authors; and not only 
the specific or representative forms of the different 
sorts, but scores of individual images of each sev- 
eral sort — ten times as many as the little room 
could have held if they had come in proper solid 
bulk, and ten times ten as many, if the feminine 
ones had come, needing room not only for their 
proper bulk, but also for the vast environments of 
hoops or crinoline, in the midst of which they ordi- 
narily go about. But appearing, not indeed in 
pur is naturalihics — which they knew to be im- 
proper even for spirits, but very becomingly draped 
in the pure eidolon, or image way, there was plenty 
of space for them all, without the least jostling or 
crowding of hoops. Which fact persuades me it 
15 



338 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

was not without reason the old schoolmen enter- 
tained the question, how many angels could he ac- 
commodated on the point of a needle, and also the 
question whether those celestial creatures could not 
go from one point in space to any other point, how- 
ever remote, without going through the interme- 
diate points. And this again reminds me, sugges- 
tively, of the truth enunciated hy Mr. Shandy, 
when he said : "it is not without reason, "brother 
Toby, that learned men have written dialogues 
upon long noses." "Which reminds me again of the 
remark Dr. Oldham (who has a wonderfully gener- 
alizing faculty of mind) made upon Mr. Shandy's 
observation — namely, that all things either have a 
reason, or else have no reason at all ; of which lat- 
ter sort are all the greatest and truest truths, God, 
and Duty, and all Divine-Eternal things. If the 
remark seem to any one obscure or worse, I am 
sorry for him ; it is not my fault. Perhaps it may 
be the fault of the remark. Perhaps not. 

" But what of the vision ? What came of it ? " 

Well, nothing came of it. 

" Indeed ! Then methinks it is a case of large 
promise and small performance — a grand show of a 
road leading nowhere." 

I am very sorry ; but there was no help for it. 



AT GREYSTONES. 339 

Only you must consider how much, better it is to 
bring up nowhere with a whole skin, than to break 
one's bones by tumbling over a precipice. 

But I correct myself. I did not mean to say 
that absolutely nothing came of it, for the Doctor 
came of it, and that remark of the Doctor's which 
I have just given, which would not otherwise have 
come, and which alone is worth a chapter by itself 
— in the opinion of those who think so. Of whom 
I am one. 

I only meant to say that the spirits of my vis- 
ion said nothing. What they might have said if 
the Doctor had not come, neither you nor I can 
tell. Only I hope, if they had made me the organ 
or medium of their utterances, they would have 
given me something more sensible to set down than 
Judge Edmonds' spirits make him write. Lord 
Bacon (since the death of the pedant king who 
likened his great work to " the peace of Grod, which 
passeth all understanding ") has been thought by 
most persons to have discoursed very respectably 
when in the flesh. But even if he had been as 
foolish as his royal critic, the stuff he now talks to 
Judge Edmonds would make one think of the ex- 
clamation of the man in Moliere's play upon meet- 
ing the spirit (as he thought) of his friend whom 



340 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

he supposed to be dead : " my old friend's ghost ! 
How ugly he looks ! He never was very handsome, 
and death has improved him very much the wrong 
way ! " A terribly deteriorating place for the in- 
tellect that spirit-world must be, to make such 
fools of men like Lord Bacon and the other famous 
spirits whom " the Judge " evokes. 

But my spirits said nothing ; — for just as they 
had grouped themselves into one great living bou- 
quet of noble and beautiful countenances, with so 
many varieties of fine expression of mind and soul, 
and I was rapt in contemplation of the sight, I was 
startled by a touch, and looking up saw the Doctor 
looking over my shoulder. I had not been con- 
scious of his entrance ; but his coming broke up 
the concourse. .The disturbed images departed like 
dissolving views, until nothing was left around me 
but " air, thin air," and the Doctor. 

" What a bead roll," said the Doctor, running 
his eyes over the list, " but after all, the readers 
that every author likes best, are those who like his 
book. In fact, as bread, according to Lord Peter's 
determination, includes every other nutritive sub- 
stance, so such readers become courteous, gentle, 
kind, candid, benevolent, friendly, intelligent, dis- 
criminating, sagacious, judicious, learned, thought- 



AT GREYSTONES. 341 

ftil, and wise all at once — in a word, they become 
in Quintessential excellence every sort of good reader 

ever invoked And Dear, withal, which 

is not a name of a sort, but a word of the heart, 
which the author addresses to his readers, with va- 
rious shades of feeling indeed, according to the 
person and the case, but always as implying an es- 
tablished sympathy and liking between them. 

" And as to the Courteous, which stands at the 
head of your list, you may remember that while it 
takes something more than a gentle and kind spirit 
to make a courteous person in the intercourse of 
social life, these dispositions are quite enough to 
make a courteous reader — which is something au- 
thors may be thankful for ; it gives them a chance 
for a larger parish." 

But how will it fare with this book ? 

I am apt to think it will be liked and disliked ; 
and perhaps the liking of the likers will not be so 
strong as the dislike of the dislikers ; yet I shall 
be more gratified by the liking of those that like 
it, than troubled by the disliking of those that dis- 
like it. I shall be very prone to think more highly 
of the judgment and taste of the former than of 



342 DOCTOR OLDHAM 

the latter. There is a great deal of human nature 
in other men besides Gil Bias's Archbishop. 

Be all this as it may, if it finds enough of likers, 
I may find more to say about the Doctor, and more 
of his talk to set down. 



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